Opening up new opportunities for participation

Many residents have come to know Sathish Arumugam through his work with the Residents Assembly Service (RAS) and his recent chairing of General Meetings. He joined Auroville in 2007 but before that he had been closely connected with the community for many years. Here is his story.  

My father comes from a village about 20 kilometres from here, my mother is from Kuilapalayam. I started my education at New Creation School, where I did well, but when I went to Udavi School I was very naughty and not much focussed on my studies. One teacher told me that because of my playfulness in the classroom I should stop coming to school and act in movies instead! 

My mother was supporting my whole family, so at 16 I felt I should leave school to help her. Around 1999 I began work in Auroville's Future as an office boy. I only did it for a year but during that time I met many Aurovilans because I was also functioning as a messenger and going to different communities with blueprints of maps etc.

After that year I went back to After School because of my friends, all of whom were continuing their studies, were telling me about school life and I felt I was missing something. It was there that I learned computer work and the basics of web development, and this has been my profession ever since. 

During the school holidays, I was able to work with Alok Aurovilian in his unit AVision, doing multimedia and web development for overseas clients. Alok was very important in my life.  He didn't see me as just a worker but he was educating me about how I should live my life and how I should approach my work etc. I worked with him for three and a half years until he closed the unit.  

Then he referred me to Maroma, where I worked there for eight years, doing package design and computer administration. Simultaneously, I was working at Auroville's browsing centre in the Solar Kitchen. I would work in Maroma until 5 pm and come to the browsing centre for another two to three hours in the evenings. 

At the same time, I was freelancing in web development, and this has become my main activity after leaving Maroma. I work for customers and clients in Auroville and outside, although I’ve also set up and maintained websites for Auroville activities like fund-raising for the land.  One of my clients, who I have been working with since 2007, is a pharmaceutical research company based in London. I look after all their web requirements and manage their websites. The owner is a friend of Aurovilian Minhaj Ameen (Min), somebody who I also work with. While working with Min, we’ve developed a web based database software to collect data for about 5000 schools in 15 states of India. 

My wish to join Auroville was due to a pull from some of my friends who had already joined. This seems to be a pattern in my life, taking decisions based upon what was happening around me. However, I knew a lot about Auroville before I applied, through my schooling life and working with Auroville’s Future.  

After I joined, for many years I was not much involved in the community's life; I was totally focussed upon my work because it was so demanding. I used to work like a machine, getting up in the morning and going directly to my work and then working until two or three next morning. This would go on day after day. However, I’m thirty six now and my body can’t do this anymore.  

Fortunately, a friend is working with me now and my work pressure has eased a little bit. Now we’re mainly working for a Singapore-based client for whom we developed a real estate marketing tool. While the workload is not like before, I still get what I need financially and I am happy with it. 

I always wanted to get more involved with the community so now I had more time for community matters. One year ago, the RAS announced they were looking for new members and I decided to apply.  My intention was just to provide technical support but gradually I have been pulled into chairing community meetings, something for which I was not at all prepared. In fact, my first one was a bit of a disaster. 

Maël and I were supposed to present the results of a survey on the selection process, but just before the meeting we both did some practice on who could present which part. During the meeting, I was so nervous, seeing so many people in front of me, that I messed it up. I couldn’t focus, I started blathering and felt so embarrassed. Luckily Maël was equal to the situation and presented perfectly, even though he was also nervous. For one of the General Meetings the RAS organised, residents who called the meeting said that a chairperson should be selected on the spot as they were concerned that a preselected facilitator would have a predefined outcome in mind. However, when we in the RAS asked the meeting for somebody to volunteer, nobody came forward. Everybody was looking at myself and another colleague from RAS and I had no idea what to do: at one point I felt it was actually a ridiculous idea. Finally, somebody volunteered. 

At the next General Meeting on the topic again we called for a chairperson from the floor and this time nobody came forward. This time I felt I had to do it. I tried calming myself, telling myself to forget about the crowd. Somehow I managed to focus people on the topic. People were shooting at each other and somehow I managed to get them to focus on the meeting’s objective. Afterwards, people said they appreciated what I had done and this gave me more confidence. Now I am continuing to chair meetings although I’m not yet perfect and I imagine I could do better.

Also, we don’t have enough time or people in the RAS to work with other facilitators and help them prepare the meeting. 

It’s a year since I’ve been working with the RAS and I’ve noticed a number of things. For example, people come to meetings mainly based upon their interest. Many people came to the Governing Board meetings and meetings where Auroville seems in danger, like the threat of a new highway, but people have their own lives to lead and if they don’t feel impacted by the topic, they don’t come.  

It’s also been noted that relatively few people from the local bioregion attend many of these community meetings. While I think language may be a factor for those who struggle with English, I think it’s often a lack of interest, as well as the fact that people cannot spare the time from their work and personal life. This was certainly the case for me in the past. 

But I’ve also been seeing participation happen in other ways. Recently, Aurovik and Vinodhini organised two separate meetings in Tamil on the entry/exit process and a very different crowd of residents came. One meeting was for old-timer Tamil Aurovilians, the other for younger ones. Each meeting went on for three hours. People were asking many questions, making good suggestions. Of course, the fact that the meetings were in Tamil made them feel more relaxed about expressing themselves. 

So it doesn’t necessarily mean that residents from the bioregion are not interested in community affairs, as some people have suggested. If they are invited personally and are given time to understand things and can express themselves in their own language, many of them are very willing to participate. Also, if they know there will be people from their age group they are more likely to come. The problem is that in General Meetings we have limited time both to give information and for questions. Hence many of these people don’t come.

In other words, we need to open up opportunities for those, and there are a lot of them, who don’t have the time to come to a General Meeting or do not feel comfortable speaking in English, or do not use the computer. 

I have no complaints about my life in Auroville.  I’ve had my problems, like housing problems, but who hasn’t! Every situation I have been through has given me something: writing skills, learning skills, speaking skills. Everything happened on its own, I didn’t go after things, but I’ve always been able to learn through circumstances, through whatever happened to me. 

My wife, Usha, is a teacher in Nandanam School and we have two children. Usha was born in Auroville. It’s a love marriage. We met while we were at school.

I feel I’ve been supported by the community, and I’m very happy to be part of the Residents Assembly Service because the team is so good and I meet so many new people. I feel that now I’m really 

contributing something to the community beyond my professional work, something which had always concerned me before. So even if my professional work stops, I will keep doing this to learn more about myself and Auroville.