Pavanaja, as per the FCRA: 3. (1) No foreign contribution shall be accepted by any- (g) association or company engaged in the production or broadcast of audio news or audio visual news or current affairs programmes through any electronic mode, or any other electronic form as defined in clause ® of sub-section (I) of section 2 of the Information Technology Act, 2000 or any other mode of mass communication; (h) correspondent or columnist, cartoonist, editor, owner of the association or company referred to in clause (g).

Writing a weekly column, as a freelancer makes one a columnist.

On 13 May 2014 15:52, Pavanaja U B pavanaja@vishvakannada.com wrote:

Hi,

There is a factual error. I am not employed with Prajavani. I write just one column per week as freelancer.

Regards,

Pavanaja

*From:* wikimedia-in-blr-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto: wikimedia-in-blr-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] *On Behalf Of *Srikanth Ramakrishnan *Sent:* 13 May 2014 12:50 *To:* Wikimedia India Community list *Cc:* Kannada Wikipedia Discussion List wikikn-l@wikipedia.org; Mailing list for Wikimedians / Wikipedians in Bangalore, India *Subject:* Re: [Wikimedia-in-blr] [Wikimediaindia-l] On CIS's grants request from Wikimedia Foundation

Hi all, I have one important question here.

The Foreign Contribution Regulatory Act prohibits money received from abroad to be used as payments or salaries to anyone employed with the press or media.

I believe Dr. Pavanaja is a columnist for Prajavani. How does this work out?

It's just a preemptive question.

On 12 May 2014 17:45, Hari Prasad Nadig hpnadig@gmail.com wrote:

Fellow Wikimedians,

As you all know, Center for Internet and Society, Bangalore has sought funding of about *1.8 Crores* through the FDC process from Wikimedia Foundation to carry out work on seven local language projects in India that includes Kannada, Telugu among others. [1]

The funds primarily cover the salaries of the people belonging to the CIS-A2K team among other administrative expenses and other expenses as outlined on their proposal page.

The proposal was up for Community review and comments until April 30th and many have recorded their response about it [2]. Several community members have come forward in pointing out that the staff salaries being paid and that being proposed - are quite on the higher side (which is up to 2.4 Lakhs per month per person).

Apart from the concerns on extremely high salaries for Indian norms of the team members of CIS-A2K team, there have been some serious concerns raised about some apparent Conflict of Interest [3] and non-compliance with the local laws (mainly Karnataka Societies act and the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act).

However, looks like the proposal has moved forward through the FDC process for funding despite the concerns raised and has gotten through to the next stage.

More concerns have now been raised by several community members on the Staff Assessment discussion page here:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants_talk:APG/Proposals/2013-2014_round2/T...

I invite you to participate in the discussion and help steer this in the right direction.

[1] - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Proposals/2013-2014_round2/The_Ce... [2] - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants_talk:APG/Proposals/2013-2014_round2/T... [3] - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge/Draft_Work_plan_Ju...

Thank you,

-- Hari Prasad Nadig http://hpnadig.net http://twitter.com/hpnadig http://flickr.com/hpnadig

---

Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l

--

Regards, Srikanth Ramakrishnan,

What goes around, may not necessarily come around, it may simply bounce back.

Please sign this petition for Volvo buses in Coimbatore:

https://www.change.org/en-IN/petitions/the-transport-minister-tamil-nadu-int...

---

Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l

Dear Hari,

I am afraid that the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) is being interpreted selectively here. While Section 3 of the FCRA is important it is important to read it in conjunction with Section 4 of the FCRA (an exception clause for Section 3), which states that even those who participate in broadcast and electronic media can receive foreign money, “*by way of salary, wages or other remuneration due to him* or to any group of persons working under him, from any foreign source or by way of payment in the ordinary course of business transacted in India by such foreign source”.

I do not think there is any violation in Pavanaja writing for Prajavani.

Best, Vishnu

On Wednesday 14 May 2014 12:15 AM, Hari Prasad Nadig wrote:

Dear Pavanaja,

Please correct me if I'm wrong.

You have received an annual compensation of about *17 Lakhs* last year (that also excludes travel and other reimbursements) as per the declaration made by Vishnu on the talk page of this proposal [1]. This came from the funds granted to CIS that was received from WMF through FCRA. And this will be increased by 20% for this year?

Further, for Kannada alone, *12.3 Lakhs* seem to be set aside out of which you seem to be the primary beneficiary. [2]

And all this while, you have been a columnist for Prajavani.

This seems to be a clear violation of Foreign Contribution Regulation Act as outlined by Srikanth on the copied email.

Regards,

[1] - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants_talk:APG/Proposals/2013-2014_round2/T... [2] - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge/Draft_Work_plan_Ju...

On 13 May 2014 22:29, Srikanth Ramakrishnan <rsrikanth05@gmail.com mailto:rsrikanth05@gmail.com> wrote:

Pavanaja,
as per the FCRA:
3. (1) No foreign contribution shall be accepted by any- (g)
association or company engaged in the production or broadcast of
audio news or audio visual news or current affairs programmes
through any electronic mode, or any other electronic form as
defined in clause ® of sub-section (I) of section 2 of the
Information Technology Act, 2000 or any other mode of mass
communication; (h) correspondent or columnist, cartoonist, editor,
owner of the association or company referred to in clause (g).

Writing a weekly column, as a freelancer makes one a columnist.
*
*
*
*


On 13 May 2014 15:52, Pavanaja U B <pavanaja@vishvakannada.com
<mailto:pavanaja@vishvakannada.com>> wrote:

    Hi,

    There is a factual error. I am not employed with Prajavani. I
    write just one column per week as freelancer.

    Regards,

    Pavanaja

    *From:*wikimedia-in-blr-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org
    <mailto:wikimedia-in-blr-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org>
    [mailto:wikimedia-in-blr-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org
    <mailto:wikimedia-in-blr-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org>] *On
    Behalf Of *Srikanth Ramakrishnan
    *Sent:* 13 May 2014 12:50
    *To:* Wikimedia India Community list
    *Cc:* Kannada Wikipedia Discussion List wikikn-l@wikipedia.org
    <mailto:wikikn-l@wikipedia.org>; Mailing list for Wikimedians
    / Wikipedians in Bangalore, India
    *Subject:* Re: [Wikimedia-in-blr] [Wikimediaindia-l] On CIS's
    grants request from Wikimedia Foundation

    Hi all, I have one important question here.

    The Foreign Contribution Regulatory Act prohibits money
    received from abroad to be used as payments or salaries to
    anyone employed with the press or media.

    I believe Dr. Pavanaja is a columnist for Prajavani. How does
    this work out?

    It's just a preemptive question.

    On 12 May 2014 17:45, Hari Prasad Nadig <hpnadig@gmail.com
    <mailto:hpnadig@gmail.com>> wrote:

    Fellow Wikimedians,

    As you all know, Center for Internet and Society, Bangalore
    has sought funding of about *1.8 Crores* through the FDC
    process from Wikimedia Foundation to carry out work on seven
    local language projects in India that includes Kannada, Telugu
    among others. [1]

    The funds primarily cover the salaries of the people belonging
    to the CIS-A2K team among other administrative expenses and
    other expenses as outlined on their proposal page.

    The proposal was up for Community review and comments until
    April 30th and many have recorded their response about it [2].
    Several community members have come forward in pointing out
    that the staff salaries being paid and that being proposed -
    are quite on the higher side (which is up to 2.4 Lakhs per
    month per person).

    Apart from the concerns on extremely high salaries for Indian
    norms of the team members of CIS-A2K team, there have been
    some serious concerns raised about some apparent Conflict of
    Interest [3] and non-compliance with the local laws (mainly
    Karnataka Societies act and the Foreign Contribution
    Regulation Act).

    However, looks like the proposal has moved forward through the
    FDC process for funding despite the concerns raised and has
    gotten through to the next stage.

    More concerns have now been raised by several community
    members on the Staff Assessment discussion page here:
    https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants_talk:APG/Proposals/2013-2014_round2/The_Centre_for_Internet_and_Society/Staff_proposal_assessment

    I invite you to participate in the discussion and help steer
    this in the right direction.


    [1] -
    https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Proposals/2013-2014_round2/The_Centre_for_Internet_and_Society/Proposal_form
    [2] -
    https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants_talk:APG/Proposals/2013-2014_round2/The_Centre_for_Internet_and_Society/Proposal_form
    [3] -
    https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge/Draft_Work_plan_July_2014_-_June_2015/Budget#Budget_as_per_Expenditure_Heads

    Thank you,

    -- 
    Hari Prasad Nadig
    http://hpnadig.net
    http://twitter.com/hpnadig
    http://flickr.com/hpnadig


    _______________________________________________
    Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
    Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
    <mailto:Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
    To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences
    visit
    https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l



    -- 

    Regards,
    Srikanth Ramakrishnan,

    What goes around, may not necessarily come around, it may
    simply bounce back.

    Please sign this petition for Volvo buses in Coimbatore:

    https://www.change.org/en-IN/petitions/the-transport-minister-tamil-nadu-introduction-of-volvo-city-buses-in-the-city-of-coimbatore


    _______________________________________________
    Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
    Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
    <mailto:Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
    To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences
    visit
    https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l




-- 
Regards,
Srikanth Ramakrishnan,
What goes around, may not necessarily come around, it may simply
bounce back.

Please sign this petition for Volvo buses in Coimbatore:
https://www.change.org/en-IN/petitions/the-transport-minister-tamil-nadu-introduction-of-volvo-city-buses-in-the-city-of-coimbatore


_______________________________________________
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org
<mailto:Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l

-- Hari Prasad Nadig http://hpnadig.net http://twitter.com/hpnadig http://flickr.com/hpnadig

---

Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l

Vishnu,

All your proposed plans can be done and have been done by community for years with ZERO staff cost.

Please don't justify your program budget by including inflated staff salary as a part of it.

Ravi

Dear Hari,

Please see my replies in-line.

On Wednesday 14 May 2014 12:51 AM, Hari Prasad Nadig wrote:

Vishnu,

There have been detailed discussion on how the salaries seem to overshadow everything else in CIS's proposal of *1.8 Crore*. And it is not just me, many other community members who have logged their comment there have felt that the salaries are quite extravagant to Indian standards. Even the staff assessment takes note of this.

You yourself seem to be drawing around *24 Lakhs *per annum (which is 2 Lakhs per month!) that excludes travel and reimbursements as declared by you. [1] I'm pretty sure even the readers on this mailing list recognize that these are pretty huge salaries that we're talking about for Indian standards in non-profits for the responsibilities outlined.

Yes, it is no secret how much salary I draw or what the CIS-A2K program budget is and what we have proposed. Members on this list will remember that once I took over as the Program Director of CIS-A2K, I have ensured that we bring transparency to the entire CIS-A2K program including the project budget. We shared the entire A2K budget with the community in May 2013 on this list [1]. Staff salaries which also includes my salary were disclosed. Members on the list do know that we have taken this transparency measure much before the current FDC application (or at a time when we were not thinking about this FDC application). Neither I nor the current CIS-A2K team had any say in determining the salaries. There has been an extensive discussion on this here [2].

I am afraid that in your earlier mail the proposed A2K program plans number was wrongly quoted along with the per-person salary and I was merely highlighting the right facts.

Further, on the FCRA compliance issues, the compliance to Karnataka Societies Act and the concerns about Conflict of Interest - there are apparently some grave issues *which require that more documentation is made public* by the CIS as stated by me at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants_talk:APG/Proposals/2013-2014_round2/T...

and at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants_talk:APG/Proposals/2013-2014_round2/T...

We appreciated this effort on Meta here [3]. Again let me appreciate the community members and your effort to throw light on these concerns. As stated in the reply on Meta [3], and I quote here for the benefit of the members:

"CIS has never compromised in getting the best available professional expertise in complying with the various statutory requirements. So at the outset we need to state that CIS has always complied with the statutory advice received from our legal adviser and whenever required also sought second opinion. Thus to our current understanding we are in the best possible compliance with the statutory requirements for the not-for-profits in India. However, because a few of the community members, in the interest of continuing support to Wikimedia movement in India, expressed serious concerns, CIS will take every effort to share these with our legal advisers for their professional opinion. This could take some days, but we are certainly committed to sharing our legal advisers' opinion on these matters with the community and FDC at the earliest. This exercise is also important for CIS as it will help us to put ourselves in much better compliance, if required."

We are committed to seeking the opinion of our legal advisers on the concerns raised, as we respect the voice of the community members, including you. Also it is more in the interest of CIS to better comply with the statutory requirements.

I'm afraid that just the explanations may not suffice here as the concerns are serious in nature. I sincerely hope that you shall open up the documents for at least the sake of transparency.

Please note that CIS has never kept its documents closed to open them again. CIS gets its financial and institutional documents scrutinized every year and reports to multiple authorities as part of various statutory compliances. The Income Tax department periodically scrutinizes CIS's accounts. All the documents are always open for scrutiny by the donors. We have made every document available that was asked by the WMF's visiting team to CIS (which includes WMF's CFO Garfield Byrd) in February 2014. We had also thrown open all our document to the general public for scrutiny during May 2013. I have written to members on this list and other Wikimedia lists, inviting them to come and scrutinize all our documents during this Open Week. Please see the announcement here [4].

Thanks for engaging with CIS-A2K's work, which we always appreciate.

Best, Vishnu

[1] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2013-May/009980.html

[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants_talk:APG/Proposals/2013-2014_round2/T...

[3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants_talk:APG/Proposals/2013-2014_round2/T...

[4] http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2013-May/009980.html

Dear Ravi,

On Wednesday 14 May 2014 01:02 PM, Ravishankar wrote:

Vishnu,

//Please note that CIS has never kept its documents closed to open them again. //

//We had also thrown open all our document to the general public for scrutiny during May 2013. I have written to members on this list and other Wikimedia lists, inviting them to come and scrutinize all our documents during this Open Week.//

Please let me know when is this open week for 2014.

It was done as part of the CIS's 5th anniversary. I am not sure if we will have a similar open week for 2014. But should we get the FDC funding, I would like to explore means by which the community can also take part in financially auditing the A2K expenses. We could discuss this separately, later?

I would like to come and have a look at the MoU you signed with WMF.

As stated earlier on this mailing list, we are unable to share this MoU as WMF has given us a clear instruction not to do so.

Since WMF is silent on answering crucial questions on the MoU, could you please answer one question:

What is the exit clause for your working partnership with WMF?

The Grant agreement is for two years.

Best, Vishnu

Dear Hari,

On Wednesday 14 May 2014 02:11 PM, Hari Prasad Nadig wrote:

[..snip..]

On 14 May 2014 12:53, Vishnu <visdaviva@gmail.com mailto:visdaviva@gmail.com> wrote:

...

I'm afraid that just the explanations may not suffice here as the
concerns are serious in nature. I sincerely hope that you shall
open up the documents for at least the sake of transparency.

Please note that CIS has never kept its documents closed to open
them again. CIS gets its financial and institutional documents
scrutinized every year and reports to multiple authorities as part
of various statutory compliances.

[...]

Noted.

Kindly make the following documents public:

1. Information about the AGMs and elections held by CIS for its governing body for all these years.
2. Latest copy of the Memorandum of Association as filed with the Registrar of Societies, Karnataka (as mandated by Clause 13 of the Karnataka Societies Registration act).
3. The annual filings of CIS with the Registrar of Societies, Karnataka for all these years.
4. The property ownership documents of the premises where CIS office works from.
5. The MoU signed by CIS with WMF.
6. The FCRA certification and compliance related documents.

We do not have the property ownership documents (no. 4) as CIS does not own the building. These are with the owners and we cannot provide them.

As stated on this list many times we cannot share the WMF Grant Agreement (no. 5) without the explicit permission from WMF.

Rest of the documents could be made available. But the admin team is in the middle of audit. Let me consult Sunil (he will return to office mid next week) and get back on this.

Best, Vishnu

On Wednesday 14 May 2014 10:11 PM, Hari Prasad Nadig wrote:

...

    We do not have the property ownership documents (no. 4) as
    CIS does not own the building. These are with the owners and
    we cannot provide them.

In that case, you could perhaps provide the rental agreement made and signed by CIS with the owner? And perhaps the electricity bill (which specifies the name of the owner)?

Dear Hari,

Yes, this should be very much possible.

Cheers, Vishnu