[governance] The New Class: Civil Society Professionals?

[Jeremy Malcolm]

On 22/05/2008, at 10:26 PM, Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote:

>>     [These seem to be Veni's main points:]
>>     - we may be seeing the emergence of a professional class of civil
>> society activists ("CS professionals").
>
> There are two classes of these:
>
> * Lobbyist type organizations - that have a particular (political,
> ideological) agenda and spend significant time on it.  The narrow  
> focus Veni
> describes tends to view IG through the "ICANN + RIR" filter.
>
> * IG/CS "freeloaders" - plenty of so-called "NGOs" that exist solely  
> to
> receive funding, grants and fellowships, and translate these to paid
> holidays abroad and a lavish lifestyle at home.

I'm not privy to what may have prompted Veni's rant, and I don't  
consider I'm personally in the firing line here (I'm currently  
unemployed and haven't made a penny from IG), but this seems quite  
unfair.  The other stakeholder groups are much better resourced to  
participate in IG activities than civil society is, but we don't  
impute the same ill motivations to them.

In any case, I've seen little to suggest that IG is such a gravy train  
as you make it out to be.  The IGF, in particular, doesn't even have  
enough money to fund a decent Web site.  What meagre funds do  
intermittently flow to "civil society professionals" to help fund  
their research and activism is a pittance against the resources of  
governments and the private sector.  Yet in my estimation they make  
far better use of it.

-- 
Jeremy Malcolm LLB (Hons) B Com
Internet and Open Source lawyer, IT consultant, actor
host -t NAPTR 1.0.8.0.3.1.2.9.8.1.6.e164.org|awk -F! '{print $3}'

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