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Preparing for the 50th Anniversary

 
The preliminary planning team for the 50th anniversary will soon be completing its work. What was their task? Their vision? And how have they organized the work? Auroville Today spoke to three members to find out more.

Auroville Today: When did the planning for Auroville’s 50th birthday celebrations begin?

Marco: We were discussing this in the Art Service even before the Auroville Retreat. We knew it would be a huge event and that to plan such an event you have to start early. The formal planning for the event began with the Governing Board setting up the Envisioning Committee in August, 2014.

Mariana: The new Working Committee offered its help to the Envisioning Committee and, with its approval, invited the community to submit projects. After receiving many projects, they came up with the idea to hold nine festivals or events in the year leading up to the 28th February, 2018. But they realised there was a lot of work to be done, and that’s when they suggested to the Envisioning Committee that the Auroville Arts Service and Outreach Media take on the preliminary planning, as these teams had already worked together on organizing the Chennai festival.

Were you given any guidelines?

Dave: There were a few. They included that the Festival should focus on ‘centring within’, and that the youth should have an important role.

Marco: We discussed if we wanted to repeat the kind of festivals we had done in the past, but we were not very happy about this idea.

Mariana: We were not interested in a top-down approach. We wanted to do something more participatory, to reach out to the community and see what the community wanted to do. That’s when we invited Dave to join us.

Dave: I was asked how I saw the organization of such an event. I sent the team an ‘organogram’ I have used in humanitarian response situations elsewhere in the world. This is a standardised set-up, with teams taking on certain organizational responsibilities. We decided to propose this structure for organising the coordination and the support needed for the projects under the overall programme for the next three months.

This part, however, was not participatory. What was participatory was the workshops. We held five workshops in different theme areas for people who wanted to present projects for the 50th. In addition, we held project clinics to help people write and clarify their projects, and recently there was an Expo where people presented their projects to the community.

By the end of this process, we had three major themes under which a whole range of projects were grouped. About half of the projects fall under ‘Creative Arts’, then we have ‘Mind and Body’ and ‘Inspiring Spaces’. Organisation is a separate category. Three groups come under organization: event coordination, communication and liaison, and programme and support, which includes project writing, the financial aspects etc.

It’s interesting as it is very decentralised and yet centralised at the same time. One of our ideas was to experiment with this process and see if we could learn some lessons for the future. As far as I know, it is the first time we have had so many projects – over one hundred at present – involved under one umbrella in Auroville.

What is the overall vision for the 50th anniversary celebrations?

Dave: The vision is to re-inspire our collective aspiration in order to contribute towards achieving the Auroville Charter and Dream. The desired outcome is a renewed sense of the raison d’être of Auroville by means of inspiring events and initiatives.

Marco: For me, the most interesting part has been the process. One of the challenges was how all these people with their different projects could work together to achieve something larger than their personal interests. I was surprised to see that for the artists this was quite easy. Immediately after the workshop they decided to have further meetings together and asked us from the Art Service to facilitate. I think the same thing happened for other groups.

Mariana: You are working with a group of people who come in with projects that mean the world to them, and then at some point the ‘I’ suddenly becomes a ‘We’, and everybody decides to work together to create something where all the projects are included but as part of something greater.

Dave: At a certain point in some of these workshops you suddenly felt that the IQ of the group had suddenly gone up above an individual’s IQ. It doesn’t happen often, but when the whole group is working together on a solution in a participatory way interesting things can happen, and we witnessed this.

Throughout the workshops Audrey’s painting, which included the vision for the 50th celebration, was hanging in the room, and I think this was also an inspiration for everybody.

What about the quality of the projects being proposed. Is there any form of quality control?

Dave: Each project proposer has to fill in the ‘planning hand’, which is a process I have used with illiterate farmers in Africa. Basically, it means answering the five ‘ws’: who is going to do what, why, when and where? I think the key question in Auroville is who going to do it because we have lots of ideas for projects but not so many people willing to take responsibility for implementing them.

In addition, we tell the proposers that their proposals have to be SMART – specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound. The proposers are also asked to answer a number of questions about their projects like, How will your project contribute towards inner and outer growth, on a personal and collective level? How will your project move Auroville and the Aurovilians towards the ideals of The Charter and The Dream? Is your project economically sustainable? How does your project connect with Auroville’s wider physical and social context?

These are self-filtering exercises. The idea is to try and ensure that there are common standards. We are also proposing there should be some kind of support function to help people implement their projects if they ask for this.

Who will take the decision regarding whether a project goes forward or not?

Marco: There is a misunderstanding in the community that we are the group that is deciding this. We are simply trying to put together what is coming from the community; we are not deciding anything.

Mariana: One of the things we have said and which we stand by is that this group will not select projects; we will help the project stand but we will not choose. The proposals will be submitted to the Envisioning Committee, which, after vetting them, will present them to the meeting of the Governing Board in March for its approval. Then the Board will submit the proposals to the Government of India, and ask for a special grant allocation.

What was brought to our attention by the Governing Board is that our proposal will only be as strong as the weakest link, so we need to make sure that all our projects are in good shape, and that there is a high level of probability for them to happen. To ensure this, we have brought in a separate team of Aurovilian reviewers to look at all the projects.

Dave: The review group is looking at financial capability, the capability of the people to manifest the project and the readiness of the project itself. There are some projects where the idea is good but the project is not fully developed. If it is a big budget project and somebody has never done anything like this before, then we have to figure out how we can support them.

With the infrastructure projects, one of the key questions is how the project holder is going to maintain the new building afterwards. A lot of them haven’t really thought about this. Also, there are existing infrastructure projects that are not progressing at present, and yet the project holders want the second phase to be funded, but they will have to fix the first phase before they request more.

For all new projects, planning permission is a big factor. Our planning department takes an average of nine months to clear any planning permission. There are quite a lot of big infrastructure projects proposed which may not get permission in time to be ready for the 50th.

One consideration is the need for accelerated development – meaning infrastructure projects. At the same time, we need to be careful not to commit to infrastructure projects beyond the community’s capacity.

Are some people simply dusting off old projects and hoping to get them included in the 50th celebrations?

Dave: We have received a number of projects that have been stalled for one reason or another and now have been lumped under the 50th anniversary celebrations. In the end, we will present all the projects that we think are viable, whatever the budget, to the Envisioning Committee. After that, the ball is in their court.

Have you been given a figure of how much money will be available?

Marco: It’s still very unclear. One hundred crore was mentioned, then fifty crore. At that point, a lot of people got interested! Then we heard it may be only a couple of crores.

Dave: At the moment, the total of the budgets submitted is more than this, but this is likely to be whittled down. The full list of projects with their budgets will be published for everyone to read by the middle of February.

Marco: It is interesting that several people approached me after the workshops saying that whatever happened regarding the funding, they were very happy to have participated in the process and they would do something for the 50th, even if funding is not available.

Mariana: Even if no funding comes through, as a result of this process there is now a group of people with solid projects that they can carry out on their own. In this sense, this exercise has been an important leverage point for the energy of the collective.

Dave: Also, many projects have taken a phased approach and are preparing to source funds elsewhere.

Will the present team continue to organize the process?

Dave: No. Our team will finish its work, which is submitting the proposals to the Envisioning Committee, by the end of January, so the question is, who is going to take on the organization afterwards? Some people are interested, but there is nothing concrete in place yet.

It is very important that we get money for the organisation aspect of the 50th celebration, with effect from the next financial year, because this includes fundraising and a team that will carry on the work of helping people to get their projects ready and implement them. The new organisation group should be ready to start work as soon as the Governing Board has given its approval to the programme. But it may be difficult for an organisation team to keep up the energy and momentum for two years.

Mariana: Yet it is important that a group is holding the energy for a process like this, because this will encourage more people to join in.

One of the points raised in the community is why we should be spending so much money on 50th celebrations when we could use the money for acquiring land etc.?

Dave: But the two are completely unrelated. The money for the 50th celebration is coming from a completely different pot: the money cannot be used for other activities.

Another concern that has been voiced is that this is merely a PR exercise, and will not benefit the community itself.

Mariana: This is incorrect. The 50th is primarily in Aurovilian event. It will be internally-focused, Auroville-centric, although there will also be events involving our employees and people from the surrounding villages.

Dave: The projects will run between February 28th, 2017 and February 28th, 2018. There will be a concentration of events in the anniversary week itself, and this may be when the Prime Minister or Chief Minister may visit. So how will we handle this? We have been told Dr. Karan Singh suggested that we could just have a concentration on the 28th itself. I think this is a great idea.

The most radical reservation is, why are we celebrating 50 years of Auroville when we are still so far away from achieving what Mother wanted of us?

Dave: But the outcome is about that, about revisiting the raison d’être of Auroville; this is the essence of the entire thing. We are saying, ‘Let’s take a moment to focus upon what we are here for and then set off again’.

Mariana: There is also a desire from the community to acknowledge what we have achieved so far, not to pretend that we are there but to acknowledge something has been done. There is a need to say thank you, to recognise the work that so many people have put into this work in progress, and also to thank India for supporting it.