Launching the Aura

On 29th December a new project was launched at the Aura Fest in the Youth Center. “Time for a shift to better align with our ideals! Come join us not for discussion but an action on our economy that promises to be fun and enriching,” ran the invitation.

There was an enthusiastic response. But what is this new project? And what does it set out to achieve? 

The Aura project is an offshoot from an idea of a research team in South Korea. The Science Walden Center sets out to show, among other things, that what is generally considered waste can have both environmental and economic value. The team at Science Walden designed toilets where human waste can be turned into compost. The idea was this can be exchanged for a complementary currency called Faeces Standard Money, which allows everyone to have access to monetary resources. 

Initially, they thought Auroville would be a very good place to experiment with this concept, but it was not technically feasible. However, two of the team felt that the idea of combining environmental and economic benefits through giving monetary value to waste or underutilised resources could be a promising path for Auroville to pursue. 

“But firstly,” says Dan Be, who knows the community well because she grew up here, “we wanted to discover what community members felt about Auroville’s present economy. Did they feel that there was enough of everything? And was it fairly distributed? The responses were not positive.  People felt the present economic system is unsustainable, that it is not equitable, and they definitely wanted to see some kind of change.”

Consequently, the team decided not to strengthen the existing economy but to explore alternatives that could complement the established in-kind systems. They came up with the idea of a Circular Basic Income based upon underutilised human resources in the community.

But what were those underutilised resources? Ahilya, a young Aurovilian member of the team, takes up the story. “We wanted to know what people could offer and what the barriers are to people’s participation. It emerged that one of the main barriers was people not knowing what they had to offer. So we organised a students workshop during which people realised they have an abundance of skills and offerings; it doesn’t have to be something you are professionally adept at, it could just be picking up somebody’s groceries or giving somebody a ride.”

The students wrote down on one sheet the things they felt they could offer and on another their needs.  Then all the sheets were pinned up and everybody was invited to take a look. 

“If they noticed a need they could fulfill, or an offering that interested them, we invited them to go up to that person and make a ‘deal’.  It was beautiful to see people pulling out their phones and making appointments to do cooking classes or driving to the beach together.”

“There was a lot of enthusiasm for the idea,” says Tina, another young member of the team. “It took only one exercise and everybody was on board.” 

So how does Circular Basic Income work?

There is an online platform on which every user would receive ten ‘Auras’ unconditionally every day. The Aura is a stand-alone, virtual, complementary currency that cannot be converted to the rupee or any other kind of money. The idea is that users put on the platform what they can offer under four categories: activities, services, items or tangible goods, education.  Then they decide individually how many Auras they wish to receive for each offering.

“We want to discourage hoarding and encourage real-time spending so that resources can flow and circulate,” says Dan Be, “and the mechanism behind the Aura would ensure real-time exchange. Firstly, each user has to share three of the ten daily Auras he/she receives with another user who is part of the social sharing network. Secondly, an accumulation of Auras would not be possible as there is a 7% depreciation rate that ensures that the ten Auras received today would disappear by the end of the month.”

Clearly, the students were enthusiastic about the proposal. But how was it received in the rest of the community?

Dan Be thought everybody would be open to a concept where everybody can access underutilised resources. However, when some people realised that individuals must ‘price’ or ‘value’ the resource they wanted to offer, there was a negative reaction. “People just wanted a sharing platform.”

But don’t they have a point? Doesn’t charging Auras run against the ideal of people offering their resources and skills freely to the community?

Ahilya acknowledges that some people are able to do this.  “However, I think we often overlook that some people in the community have difficulty with reaching this point without some kind of incentive.   So being able to ‘charge’ Auras for your offering is like a stepping stone for the ones who aren’t yet ready to make a full offering. And people who have already reached that mindset can charge the minimum for their offering.”

“It’s about shaping behaviour by giving people incentives, and setting the right cues to turn intention into action,” says Dan Be.  “You can’t expect everybody to be in this offering mode if there are no incentives. The hope is that the sharing platform will become the basis for the social change we want to see, a shift in consciousness from taking to giving.”

It is clearly the intention that everybody will participate. But what about those Aurovilians and Newcomers who are working hard just to make ends meet? Won’t they be too busy to participate? In fact, shouldn’t we begin by focussing on providing the basic needs of all before experimenting with a project like this?

Dan Be admits that at this stage this project cannot help people satisfy basic needs like food or housing.  “At the moment there is no simple answer as to how these basic needs will be covered. Right now, all we can focus on is giving people the opportunity to share what they can offer. However, if this project succeeds in bringing people together, they may be able to collaborate on solving the issue of survival needs.” 

Collaboration, trust-building, is a vital aspect of the project. “We are young, we don’t have qualifications,” says Tina, “but Jonas and Dan Be trusted us. This felt really good and gave us the motivation to work even harder.” 

Dan Be confirms there’s been a lot of trust involved in launching this project. “The young people trusted us to guide them, and the Science Walden team in Korea trusted us to potentialise this platform. And we’ve come a very long way because on the 29th of December, the platform was launched.”

Judging from the enthusiastic response at the launch, particularly from the young, the project has already acquired a high degree of acceptance. However, Dan Be notes that challenges lie ahead. “I think right now we need to focus on the user education part. We need to ensure that people feel comfortable interacting with each other on this platform.” This is why they are considering having a physical space where people can walk in and learn more about the platform. This offline base would also serve as an exchange place where people could easily drop off or pick up items. 

Then there is the question of funding. Science Walden is funding the project for the first year, but future funding is not assured. Dan Be and Jonas, who are researchers at the Science Walden Center, will be meeting with the Science Walden team in the next few months to update them about progress in Auroville. “We want to show them that this project has validity, and a real potential. Hopefully, this will lead to longer-term financial support for the team that is running it.”

Is this simply an Auroville-centric experiment, or could it have a wider relevance? 

Dan Be points out that they are dealing with a very complex topic – reimagining money and how it could play a role in building equitable and sustainable communities – which many other researchers also are trying to figure out. “If we have a well documented record of the process here, it is going to be very helpful not only for Auroville but also for other people around the world who are exploring this issue.”

“If it works in Auroville, it might be a template for other communities,” says Jonas. 

Dan Be admits to another, more personal, motivation. As a young Korean growing up in Auroville, she noticed there were no youth volunteer programmes for North East Asian countries like Korea, China and Japan. “This is untapped potential.  Korean youth have the highest suicide rate because they face so much societal pressure, so for them to know about and participate in an initiative like thiswould open up a whole new world for them. 

“We need to build bridges with these countries. And what better way to do that than with the Auroville youth who are driving this project.”