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/The_Centre_for_Internet_and_Society/Staff_proposal_assessment#Assessment_overlooks_some_grave_concerns

and at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants_talk:APG/Proposals/2013-2014_round2/The_Centre_for_Internet_and_Society/Staff_proposal_assessment#Serious_FCRA_violations.3F

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/The_Centre_for_Internet_and_Society/Proposal_form#Q19

[3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants_talk:APG/Proposals/2013-2014_round2/The_Centre_for_Internet_and_Society/Staff_proposal_assessment#Clarification_on_Statutory_Aspects_-_KSRA_and_FCRA

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