[IndyMedia Bombay] Response to Boud

[PUKAR @ IndyMedia]

Dear Boud:

Thanks again for your participation in our process of formation, and 
the very valuable points you have raised.

With regards to our meetings and decision-making processes so far, 
our meetings have been more informal, and have been focussed on how 
to get set up, do further outreach and networking with friends and 
people in the student and NGO communities, and come up with project 
ideas.

There has been little "decision-making" as much as everyone has 
expressed opinions, come up with ideas, and things have mostly flowed 
without the need for a formal "facilitator". Though both of us have 
been representing the nascent IMC to the global IMC network and doing 
the work of getting the site set up and calling meetings, which we 
hold at the offices of PUKAR and the Comet Media Foundation, both of 
which are registered non-profit charitable trusts. We do realise that 
once we get going, and our group and meeting attendance gets larger, 
we will need a decision-making policy in place. I think what we meant 
by answering "yes" was that we understand the IndyMedia principles, 
and they are principles with which we strongly agree, as do the 
people who have attended meetings and joined the discussion on the 
list-serv. Once the site is up, and meetings of the IMC are 
regularised, we hope to follow the concept of having rotating 
facilitators, and definitely, one of the things on agenda for our 
next meeting is chalking out a decision-making process that is in 
alignment with the IndyMedia Principles of Unity, and the spirit of 
open collectivity that animates others IMCs and IndyMedia volunteers 
that we know.

With regards to having representatives on the global lists, again the 
answer "yes" was referring to the fact that it is something we 
definitely agree to do. I think we were under the impression that 
this is something we needed to do only after we were officially a 
part of the network, but if it is something that we can do right now, 
I'm sure there will be people on the list or elsewhere who volunteer 
to do the needful.

  With regards to posting of minutes, we can only apologise for not 
having that system in place. All future meetings will be properly 
minuted and the minutes will be posted to the list-serv for 
discussion and correcting. For the past meetings we did try and post 
general progress reports and ideas that came up. Again, we realise 
that this was not done in a systematic way, and thank you for 
bringing that up -- it is something we need to sort out.

Thanks again for all your help, and please be in touch and ask any 
questions that you feel might be relevant.

Solidarity,


Sanjay and Shekhar
_____

PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge Action & Research)
P.O. Box 5627
Dadar, Mumbai 400014, India
E-Mail <pukarsecretariat@vsnl.net>
Phone +91 (022) 2077779, +91 98200.45529, +91 98204.04010
Web Site http://www.pukar.org.in