[governance] The New Class: Civil Society Professionals?

[Suresh Ramasubramanian]

Its not a gravy train for anybody from Oz, or from the USA. For someone from
Africa, or Asia .. well, the exchange rate means you are onto quite a good
thing, especially if you find a grant or fellowship.

Having run fellowships for conferences myself (APRICOT, say) - I know just
how much pent up demand is there and how many people get facilitated to come
to these conferences. And I know just how many people try to abuse this
system to get themselves an expenses paid vacation.

	srs

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jeremy Malcolm [mailto:Jeremy at Malcolm.id.au]
> Sent: Thursday, May 22, 2008 9:33 PM
> To: governance at lists.cpsr.org
> Subject: Re: [governance] The New Class: Civil Society Professionals?
> 
> 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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