Vickram, there seems to be a false assumption on your part that is underpinning most of your logic. Allow me to clarify. The funding is not new, it is not entering India now, in fact if I had to make an educated guess I would say the spending is an eighth or a sixth of what it was the last year and the year before. Money hasn't been diverted now, it was for the last 2-3 years, it has just been reduced to a fraction of what it was. Second, CIS has other benefactors and other priorities. There seems to be some link that was formed a while ago between them and the foundation. CIS might have the financial approvals in place to process the grant, but they are not being used to transfer to the organic entity in India but create an alternative to them. There is also no problem in getting those financial approvals for the chapter itself, it was a decision made a while ago to support CIS instead - I don't believe the chapter was a party to it. Working together would be CIS supporting the chapter, not continuing to employ and hire people on the other side of the country, for a community they know little about.

Ashwin, you're a mensch. I appreciate your attempts at levity here, but these questions haven't been asked for a while. Hisham left almost 7-8 months ago, the hiring has been delayed for a few months, then the entire game of charades with the new hire. I'm lead to deduce that CIS wasn't itself thrilled with the prospect of getting involved to this level, I believe they used an intern for the majority of correspondence to this list. All the while a team remained employed with no one to oversee them, no direction. I don't recall if any of them worked with any community members in the last year on anything substantial. If I'm wrong then please tell me you've been working with them in Pune or Mumbai, I heard things to the contrary and occasionally saw low impact, low visibility undertakings.

However, I see someone being accused of trolling for asking these questions, someone else of getting defensive. There isn't any clarification, no answer - just that these questions shouldn't be asked. These aren't necessarily questions directed at Dr. Niranjana or Vishnu, or even CIS alone, they might be more suited to inquiring how the whole situation came to be.

On Sat, Feb 9, 2013 at 6:37 AM, Bishakha Datta <bishakhadatta@gmail.com> wrote:

And to all on this list: can we please give the new A2K team the space, the good faith, and the openness so they can start to do what they need to do without feeling like people are nipping at their heels?

The team has been there for over an year now, I think hisham left 7-8 months. If anything I really don't know what half of them have been doing, or who is on the team these days. It sounded like any other gov. babu job.

Can we please put the politics, suspicions, and judgements aside and give them a break? This atmosphere seems the very opposite of a welcome.

I seem to recall you being adapt at politics yourself, ma'am. I've heard about a lot of things being said to the board. Perhaps, you can talk more about me or the Indian community to the board and staff on another occasion, and then ask to put aside politics on an open mailing list.

Can we please give them a level playing field?

Does that mean turning a blind eye to nepotism, favoritism and undisclosed conflicts of interest? They are getting more and more common I see. But sure, a level playing field - for people in places of power and authority.

-Theo