Please find my answers in line. Though I'd highly encourage everyone to post any comments on the talk page itself to make sure that there are no disparate communications and we maintain only one central page.

Hi IEP,

I don't understand the involvement of "India programs" in developing "Simple Wikipedia".

I have never seen Simple Wikipedia coming up in search results or anyone using it from India. (Please let me know the visitor stats for the project from India if this could be considered an Indian language Wikipedia.)

It has around 15.2 M page views per month "globally".

To put it in context, Hindi Wikipedia has 6.2 M page views per month. So, what is the point of spending resources in the name of India programs? Which Indian is this program going to benefit?

Involvement of India Programs comes into play since the program will run in India with an attempt to bring new editors from India and thereby increasing India related content on Wiki projects. One of the important aspects of the program is to continuously encourage these new Indian editors to continue editing beyond their in-class assignments and India Programs will work on setting up Wikipedia Clubs with this intent. 

If this is done with an idea of being a safe place to experiment with the hope of some editors migrating to en and other Indic language Wikipedias:

As mentioned in the post as well, one of our main reasons to approach Simple Wikipedia community is that they are extremely welcoming and supportive to new editors, especially towards students. In a sense, the vision of IEP and Simple Wikipedia have common ground in the belief that students can become long term editors through right kind of support. 

In addition to this, Simple Wikipedia is suitable for new editors whose mother tongue is not English. Though most IEP students will be comfortable reading, writing and speaking in English, it is not their first language. They will not be able to use complex words or frame big sentences — which is great for Simple Wikipedia project.  However, like any other Wikipedia editor, after the in-class assignment students will be free to move to any Wiki project that appeals to them.