Sacred Groves – the trials of a sustainable housing experiment

A brief overview

Some years ago, Auroville’s town planning group, L’Avenir, formed a group of Auroville architects to look at the possibilities for affordable housing. This culminated in the concept of the ‘Transit Lounge’, an experiment in low-cost dismountable houses [see Auroville Today # 297, August 2014 ].

The respected Indian architect, B.V. Doshi, who is a member of our Governing Board and Chairman of the Town Development Council, was supportive of this concept, but felt that it did not go far enough. The next step, he felt, should be a large-scale experiment in sustainable construction, as Auroville was not doing enough in this respect. A young Aurovilian architect, Manu Gopalan (‘Manu’), who had designed the dormitory of International House using innovative building techniques, was chosen to design a community of 108 houses using fully sustainable materials and techniques. It was called ‘Sacred Groves’.

The work began in July, 2013 with planning permission for a first phase of twenty houses. However, as some of the techniques to be employed were highly innovative, the project team decided to focus initially on completing three prototype houses: for a single person, a couple and a family.

Due to a number of factors, work on the site has progressed slowly, and today 80% of the three prototypes, plus infrastructure like rain catchment tanks and accommodation for volunteers, has been constructed.

Initially, the Housing Board gave the project financial support. However, the relationship with the Housing Board deteriorated, and in June 2015, the Board announced they would not continue funding the project. At this point, the FAMC provided some interim funding.

However, during a meeting of 27th May, 2016, the FAMC decided that they would release no more community funds for the Sacred Groves project, and strongly suggested that the managers take a “different approach, immediately”.

As of today, the Sacred Groves team requires 17 lakhs to complete the three prototypes. It is seeking other sources of funding to complete them. Completion, it estimates, will take another 3 months.

What is the intention?

The bare bones of the story do not explain what has been happening, and why. This is not easy to tease out as rumours and emotions swirl around the project. For some, it represents a groundbreaking experiment beset by reactionary forces. For others, it is an example of a badly conceived and managed project that is draining community funds.

Let’s begin with the intention. Doshi’s suggestion that Auroville should focus more upon ‘sustainable’ construction struck a chord with the Governing Board and International Advisory Council. It also found a ready response in Manu and Joseba, a former member of Housing Service who is a project holder in Sacred Groves. They were already concerned about Auroville’s conventional approach to building, which makes extensive use of cement, glass and steel, because the production of these materials is very wasteful and polluting.

“We need to find alternatives to these materials,” says Manu. “The other challenge we are facing is building waste. Construction waste represents the largest quantity of materials going to waste in India because nobody knows what to do with it. While in Auroville it is used on roads, in India it is often dumped in places like environmentally-valuable wetlands. If we can find a way of reusing such waste, we are doing a service to the larger India.”

The other main objective of Sacred Groves is to build permanent houses at low cost. This is of particular interest to the Housing Service, which is facing the challenge of providing adequate housing for the many people on its waiting list who have limited funds.

How has Sacred Groves tackled these challenges? Firstly, one of their guiding principles is to use natural rather than industrial materials for construction because materials like wood and earth, when ‘locked’ into buildings, sequester carbon dioxide rather than releasing it into the atmosphere. Palmyra and other local wood is used for roof beams while the walls of the Sacred Groves houses are mostly ‘cob’ – a mixture of mud and straw – as well as adobe and Earthcrete.

Secondly, they have found a way of using building waste. This involves mixing together construction rubble, earth and a small percentage of cement to create a new type of concrete: ‘Earthcrete’. “We had it tested,” says Manu, “and it gives us a strength/safety factor of 6.6 at the base of houses. In other words, we could use this material to construct buildings six stories high.”

As building waste is generally available free, this should also help address their second main objective, the lowering of construction costs. The decision of the Sacred Groves team to use volunteers, in addition to skilled workers, for construction was also intended to contribute to this, although, as Manu points out, it wasn’t the main motivation. “Volunteer builders were always part of the project design because of the immense potential to seed these ideas through informal education.”

Criticisms of the project

However, the first phase of the Sacred Groves project is costing more than originally planned and the pace of work on the site has been very slow. The Housing Board grew increasingly frustrated by this. At one point, they suggested to the FAMC that the project be discontinued and, even, that the existing structures be torn down because they were concerned that they were structurally unsafe and inappropriate for this climate.

Other objections they have raised to the Sacred Groves project include poor financial management, lack of proper accounting and monitoring of progress, poor site supervision, and lack of professionalism and qualified people. Manu’s competence to manage such a project has also been questioned.

It has also been questioned if the project is really innovative, given that materials like cob have been used in construction for thousands of years.

These are very serious charges. Apart from their immediate impact upon the credibility of the project, if they are substantiated it would ensure that such experiments do not happen again in Auroville for a very long time.

The response

The first thing the Sacred Groves team emphasise is that this should not be considered as just another conventional project with an experimental tinge. Sacred Groves, they say, is a unique and ambitious experiment. “While some materials we are using, like cob, are age-old, the way we are applying them is somewhat new,” explains Manu, “as so far it has not been used much in an urban context or in high-density row housing. What is unique in Sacred Groves is the systemic approach. We will build high-density, off-grid, row houses entirely in natural and recycled materials, and make them self-sufficient in terms of water and power, while taking care of other factors like waste disposal, food production and the cooling of the houses. To build all these things together in a systemic way is very challenging.”

This raises the issue of the competence of Manu and his team to take on such a project.

Before coming to Auroville, Manu had been working on low-cost housing for ten years with organizations like the Red Cross and Action Aid. In Auroville, he designed the International House dormitory in the International Zone. However, while the dormitory did incorporate innovative building techniques, like the use of recycled materials, Manu admits that he has never taken on a project of the size and complexity of Sacred Groves before.

Sonja, from Housing Service, feels it was irresponsible of Manu to have taken on such an ambitious project without the requisite experience. “The reality is that Manu started 3 buildings without knowing how to use the material at all…”

Looking back on all the difficulties he has encountered, Manu himself admits that it might have been wiser to have started on a smaller scale. Nevertheless, at the time he was confident he could pull it off. This was because, initially, he felt he had the support of the major working groups as well as the Governing Board, and also because he planned that 50% of the workers on site would be skilled. All this changed when the Housing Board stopped the funding for the first time, citing the slow pace of work, and financial mismanagement. Though a subsequent enquiry exonerated the Sacred Groves team of the latter, the temporary funding block meant that he had to release his team of skilled workers.

At this point, Manu decided that he didn’t want to be in this situation again. Henceforth he would rely more fully upon volunteer labour. This was a critical decision. The fact that now there was less expertise on site led to a much slower pace of work, and also the decision to complete the walls in cob rather than Earthcrete, as cob is easier for less skilled people to work with. It may also have impacted the quality of some of the work.

However, as Manu points out, even his initial batch of skilled masons had never worked in this way before and needed to be trained, and some of the volunteers – most of whom are architecture students, while some are qualified architects with low-cost construction experience – have since become skilled at these processes. Moreover, Manu continued to employ a limited number of skilled workers on site and, since last year, Rene, a project manager and building biologist, has been the main site supervisor. At present, there are seven other trained architects on site.

The Sacred Groves team has also relied upon expert advice and the testing of the materials like Earthcrete and cob by the Engineering College, Pondicherry, and by a structural engineering company, EPMCR, which is affiliated to IIT-Madras. It is worth pointing out, however, that the Auroville Earth Institute (AVEI), which has probably the greatest expertise in earth architecture in India, has not been extensively consulted.

Manu explains this by saying that AVEI had never used cob on ‘active’ buildings and only recently included cob and adobe in their training programme: their primary focus has always been on cement stabilised earth blocks.

Nevertheless, a closer relationship with AVEI might have improved some aspects of the design and construction process. It might also have prevented what happened last December when part of a cob wall of one of the prototype houses collapsed after getting saturated in heavy rains. The immediate cause was a torn tarpaulin, but AVEI pointed out in their report that, “frankly, for a raw earth, multi-story cob building, construction must not continue at all during the rains (particularly without a roof)”.

The fact that this is a multi-faceted experiment rather than a duplication of existing construction techniques also had consequences. It meant that it was difficult, if not impossible, to exactly predict the cost and duration, as so many processes had to be experimented with for the first time. Inevitably, there were failures. Prototyping, as Manu points out, is always the most costly and time-consuming part of such a project. Once the techniques are mastered, the work should proceed much faster and at less expense.

Achieving the main aims

In fact, even with the setbacks, Manu believes that today they can say they have substantially fulfilled the two main aims of the project. Firstly, they have proven that entirely sustainable forms of construction are possible using natural and recycled materials and, secondly, they have constructed at relatively low-cost – their latest estimate is that the prototype buildings, including the back-up infrastructure, have been constructed at Rs 14,500 a square metre which, according to Manu, is about half the Auroville average. Subsequent constructions in Sacred Groves should cost substantially less.

The slow pace of the work is perhaps the most apparent aspect of the project to those who visit regularly, leading one wag to dub the project ‘Sacred Graves’. The need to experiment with new materials and techniques is time-consuming, and building with cob is not fast. In addition, the fact that every six months or so there is a large-scale turnover of volunteers, and that the new ones need to be trained, clearly takes time. The three funding cuts suffered by the project have also very seriously impacted progress.

It’s also important to note that the project could not tap into any available infrastructure. In fact, they had to start from scratch.

“When we first went there, the whole area was littered with alcohol bottles, there was no road access and we did not have water or electricity,” says Manu. “And we had to convince a group of young people to live there and start working! All the preparation work on the site, including building a base camp for the volunteers, took about six months. Only then could we start work on the actual construction of Sacred Groves.”

Unfit for this climate?

One of the most serious objections to the Sacred Groves project is that the method of construction is unfitted for this climate and even unsafe for habitation. The Housing Board asserted that cob construction is vulnerable to being attacked by termites and more suited to desert conditions than sub-tropical Tamil Nadu, for it is weakened if exposed to rain and damp. They pointed to the collapse of part of a cob wall of one of the Sacred Groves houses during the previous December rains as evidence of this.

The Housing Service was sufficiently concerned to request Auroville’s Earth Institute to report on the safety and stability of the Sacred Groves prototype houses. In the report summary, the authors noted that, “The Sacred Groves Project is not an excellent example of cob construction. After numerous site visits and analysis of all relevant materials, we are obliged to state that these buildings are not well designed and not well built for various reasons.

“It is also by no means a ‘risk-free’ project, as risks exist in several areas, including that cob buildings are not commonly triple story structures in monsoon climates; while there has been quite a lot of research, we feel that some of this research has not come to a high standard; and the quality of execution is reduced as it is built by mainly unskilled and inexperienced student volunteers, who are not sufficiently supervised.”

However, regarding the concern that cob construction is unfitted for this climate, the Earth Institute stated, “This is simply incorrect. Cob construction has been used in this climate since before recorded history and it is completely suitable.”

They also concluded that these buildings are structurally safe, that they should not be torn down and the project should continue, but certain considerations for construction and maintenance must be satisfied. These include providing proper rainwater protection, strengthening the piers of the buildings and using only experienced lime plasterers for the plastering work. The report also notes that “future inhabitants must be well educated about the maintenance and responsibilities for raw earth buildings”.

Regarding termites, the Sacred Groves team have done a lot of research. They have found that the Earthcrete foundation is impervious to termites and that turmeric and Calatropis gigantea (milkweed) mixed in the cob walls is an effective termite repellent. None of the prototype buildings have been attacked by termites.

The cost factor

However, it is the cost factor more than anything else that has exercised the Housing Service and the FAMC.

So far, the FAMC has loaned 47 lakhs for the project and Housing has advanced 34.7 lakhs and donated an additional 3.93 lakhs for mobilisation costs. There have also been additional donations of approximately 52 lakhs from AVI USA, Friends of Auroville and Aurovilians.

Housing noted that on the original building application, Sacred Groves said that the total cost for the first ten units, including infrastructure, would be 95 lakhs, yet much more has been spent and the first three houses are still unfinished. They put this down to, among other things, weak management and poor site supervision. They concluded that “this project cannot be considered as an affordable housing project anymore”, pointing out that with the public money they had advanced 15 affordable family houses and 30 single units could have been built to mitigate the present housing crisis.

Joseba disagrees. He sees the money spent so far at Sacred Groves as an investment in the future. “Future housing in this project will be much cheaper because of the experimentation we have done here.”

Manu points out that the funding cuts they suffered have added to the costs. Also, that that the building application for Sacred Groves, which stated that the total cost for building ten units would be 95 lakhs, was submitted before a peer review of the project. The designs changed significantly after the review, resulting in higher costs.

He also says that people have not understood how the money was spent. “We took the strategic decision to put in the back-up infrastructure at the start of the project as well as to start by building a base camp. This was to make the site hospitable for as many volunteers as possible so that we could keep building at a low labour cost.

“So our original request to the FAMC was for funding to construct the back-up energy and water infrastructure for the entire project. We got a loan of 30 lakhs from the FAMC to set up the base camp, and AVI USA donated another 30 lakhs for infrastructure and the base camp.

“On hindsight,” admits Manu, “I don’t know whether we should have done it this way or not. But nobody told us that this money should be immediately spent on building the houses. In fact, of the 1.22 crores that was spent on the construction aspect of the project, only about 45.7 lakhs has gone into the prototype houses: it will take another 17.3 lakhs to finish them.

The investment in infrastructure will be recovered when the houses are transferred, as the cost of infrastructure will be shared between 108 houses.”

The root of the issue?

However, the root of the issue seems to be that while the Housing Service has always looked upon the Sacred Groves project primarily as a means of providing plentiful low-cost housing, the Sacred Groves team, while acknowledging the need to lower construction costs, has different priorities. For them, it is primarily a research project in sustainable housing.

Manu also mentions another important aspect of the experiment: participatory planning. “In future, the users will become the focus of the project; they will be part of all the major design decisions.”

Sonja says that it was never presented as a research project to the Housing Service, and that Housing does not have the money to pay for these kinds of experiments. Manu disputes this, saying that Housing did not object when the decision was taken to build three prototype houses to test all the new ecological systems involved.

However, he acknowledges that while he expects the pace of construction in Sacred Groves to pick up, this approach will always be slower than conventional or “industrial” building methods.

Housing, which has almost 150 Aurovilians on its books seeking better accommodation and under constant pressure to provide more housing for new arrivals with minimal funds, clearly feels frustrated.

In fact, there has been an almost complete breakdown in understanding, communication and trust between the Sacred Groves team and the Housing Service.

Manu acknowledges a certain responsibility here, as he had never clarified that the Sacred Groves project was very different from the Transit Lounge concept. It is also unclear if design changes and the decision to allocate the initial funds to infrastructure development rather than to prototype house construction was clearly communicated to Housing, or if Housing was kept informed about the progress of the work and the difficulties encountered.

Joseba, who was meant to be the key communication link between the Sacred Groves project and Housing in the early stages of the project, feels that one or two members of Housing have been opposed to the Sacred Groves project from the very beginning. This may have played a part in failures to communicate the problems being encountered on site. Sonja from Housing strongly objects to his accusation, pointing out that Housing initially supported the project but some members were concerned, as a Housing report put it, that “this project was not well thought out, and that there were too many variables”.

The cultural factor

Another of the root issues here may be a cultural one. At first sight, Sacred Groves has a slightly hillbilly flavour to it. Many things look improvised, somewhat funky, the dormitories primitive, and the three prototypes themselves have a rustic feel to them.

In fact, Sacred Groves seems at the other end of the universe to concepts like Kalpana, with its stylishly designed apartments and manicured lawns: it requires something of a different aesthetic to appreciate it. Moreover, for some casual visitors, it would be easy to assume that Sacred Groves is little more than a hippyish architectural playground for youth, that the workforce are poorly organized and not interested in serious research or dedicated work.

This is far from true. Anybody spending time there discovers that experiments in design, construction and energy production are going on in every corner, and that these are being carefully documented.

Every week the core team meets to plan the next week’s work, and the volunteers and workers come together four times daily to share what they are doing and to make any necessary adjustments in the work. The energy is overwhelmingly youthful, but extremely dedicated. And the funky-looking buildings where the volunteers and interns eat and sleep are actually part of serious research into new construction materials and lowering building costs.

Going forward

Perhaps the crucial question is not whether the Sacred Groves project should continue or not. After all, Auroville is meant for experimentation, the Earth Institute has confirmed that the buildings are safe if kept dry, and many universities and institutes have shown keen interest in the Sacred Groves experiment. In fact, the prestigious Centre for Science and Environment in Delhi finds the project groundbreaking enough to feature it in a forthcoming book on sustainable architecture.

The crucial question is on what basis and scale the experiment should go forward.

Regarding the finance, Housing and the FAMC have made it plain they will not continue to underwrite the project with community funds. The Sacred Groves team believe that much of the necessary experimentation has now been done, and that future houses will be cheaper and faster to build. This, they expect, will encourage potential residents to start buying into the project.

Another funding approach is to use workshops to help generate income for the project. Sacred Groves has been running such workshops for the past 4-5 months, and architectural and design students from all over India are eager participants. “Workshops can bring in a lot of income. This formula has been working all over the world,” says Manu. In fact, the Sacred Groves team has already raised 22 lakhs from workshops, presentations and volunteer contributions.

Joseba points out that the educational opportunities for Auroville in this field are huge. “With the Earth Institute, the Bamboo Centre and Sacred Groves, we are creating a high-class hub in Auroville for alternative construction. The kinds of things we are experimenting with here are very new; they are not taught in architectural schools. This is why the universities are interested: this is why they are sending their students here.”

So far, more than 550 volunteers and architectural interns have passed through Sacred Groves. “They bring much needed energy into Auroville,” says Joseba, “and they also help spread the interesting experimentation we are doing here to the rest of India and beyond.”

But do changes need to be made in the way that Sacred Groves has been working? Joseba believes that the Auroville administration should have been helping this experiment, “not putting obstacles in our way all the time.” This is not entirely fair. Groups like the FAMC and Housing Service have a responsibility to the community to see that public funds are being utilised well, and the Sacred Groves team may not always have assisted them in doing this. For example, Housing complains that they have not received regular accounts, or regular communications about the progress of the work or major changes in design or planning.

Manu disputes this, saying that Sacred Groves’ bills were submitted monthly to the Housing Service accountant.

However, clearly some failures in communication by the Sacred Groves team have played their part in the distrust built up in the Working Groups associated with the project, as well as negative impressions about Sacred Groves in part of the larger community.

It is also entirely conceivable that in a project like this there have been wastages and inefficiencies, particularly during the periods when there were few skilled workers on site and the site supervision was less good.

Sonja believes that Sacred Groves compares unfavourably with the Humanscape project, which she says is using many of the same construction methodologies, like waste materials and earth, but much more efficiently. Manu disagrees, pointing out that Humanscape uses quite a lot of steel and concrete and does not integrate biological building principles. “Humanscape is an example of Green Building, Sacred Groves is Ecological Building,” he clarifies.

Technically, the team believes that now they have solved most of the major issues. However, a much closer and ongoing relationship with the Earth Institute would seem to make sense as the AVEI have so much experience in the field of earth architecture. Apart from anything else, their reservations about the design of the prototypes should be investigated and, if necessary, their suggestions incorporated in future buildings.

If funds are available, it would also be advantageous to increase the number of skilled workers and supervisors on site to ensure the quality of the work. This is something which the Sacred Groves team are already considering. However, FAMC’s suggestion that the Sacred Groves team bring in outside contractors and perhaps adopt conventional building methods to finish the prototypes does not seem sensible. An outside contractor would have no experience of this type of building and probably no interest in such a project. And if the prototypes are finished in conventional materials, it would compromise the validity of the experiment.

A great deal of thought also needs to go into educating future residents of Sacred Groves, because this type of construction requires constant attention: future inhabitants will be required to play an active part in an ongoing experiment. As the AVEI report puts it, “It goes without saying that the long-term safety of these buildings will rely on having tenants who are, firstly, well educated about the maintenance responsibilities for raw earth buildings in this climate, and secondly, willing to take these responsibilities seriously and/or to report without delay when there are exterior or interior wetting issues.”

The Sacred Groves team are in the process of writing not only a detailed manual for those who want to study or replicate these construction techniques, but also a user’s manual for future residents. Manu points out that there are quite a number of people in Auroville who are seeking a different housing experience, and these would be very committed to maintaining a project like this.

Nevertheless, the Sacred Groves team have told the FAMC that they will provide a three year house-maintenance guarantee to the users of the project.

Ultimately, Auroville is for experimentation, and this should be encouraged, although not, of course, at any cost. Manu and the Sacred Groves team are extremely dedicated; they have had to be to retain their vision in the face of the criticism the project has received from some quarters.

Could they have done better? Of course: with an experiment as ambitious as this, there will always be room for improvement. At times, wrong turns may have been taken, communication poor, and the enthusiasm of the volunteers may not always have compensated for the lack of skilled workers. Although there seemed little choice at the time, redesigning the project to allow it to be constructed largely by volunteers had its risks: in some ways, as the Earth Institute pointed out, it may have compromised the quality of the work.

However, if this experiment is even partially successful, it could open up new sustainable construction possibilities not only for Auroville but for India as a whole, and the importance of this cannot be understated.

“Finally, these houses will speak for themselves,” says Manu. “If this is a relevant direction, it will get picked up. Otherwise it will get dropped.”

But, clearly, he is hopeful.

Tony

I am a physics engineer by background and I came here looking for opportunities to work in the field of physics engineering, energy etc. Rene contacted me and said they wanted to see if there are different ways of producing electricity, so for me it was a perfect opportunity.

We already know about solar and wind turbines. The challenge we have set ourselves is to find other ways to produce electricity while preventing pollution.

I started with building a machine that is able to recycle dead lead acid batteries. I use two batteries, one of which is dead, the other one running well. The good one powers a motor which changes it into high peak voltage which is sent to the second battery in short bursts. The high peak voltage cleans the plates inside this battery by detaching and recombining the molecules. In this way, the lifetime of lead acid batteries can be greatly extended.

I am an architect by profession. During the last year of my college course, I went to Kerala on an internship to study sustainable architecture. This is where I began to understand people’s real needs. People don’t need huge spaces and a luxury lifestyle. They just need something comfortable that fits with a simple lifestyle. But at present architects are not trained to provide this.

So I had a choice: either to take the usual line or to try to fulfil people’s real needs. Sacred Groves is helping me discover ways to do this. For example, my interest here is in rediscovering the lost knowledge of working materials that are simple and eco-friendly, like mud.

We have been working with cob, which is completely raw earth, but it takes a lot of time and requires a lot of people. So now we have started making adobe bricks, which also use raw earth but which are easier for conventional masons to work with. We have also done a lot of experiments with natural plasters, using lime and mud, and we are experimenting with different forms of mud flooring. All of these experiments are being carefully documented.

We don’t put any industrial products in these houses, so we are working on producing organic false ceiling tiles: we are almost ready with this. Soon we will start work on making the lime plaster.

All of this could have been done faster, but during these two years we have experienced funding cuts and these have really impacted the work. However, it pulled us together and we had to think of alternatives. Originally, for example, we were going to do all the prototype house walls entirely in Earthcrete. We shifted to cob because it requires less expertise and can very easily be adapted.

Minky

I completed my architectural degree and I have been here for one and a half years now. I did a sustainable architecture option at university but it gave me only a superficial view. However, I was interested enough in the topic to search for sustainable architecture opportunities in cities, but there is nothing.

The second experiment I have been involved in is running a generator on waste cooking oil. The diesel engine we use has to be adapted a little bit but that is not a big job. We get the oil free from Tanto restaurants and from Mango Hill hotel. The Sacred Groves generator has been running some time now on cooking oil with no problems.

Sacred Groves is very supportive of experimentation; doing these kinds of experiments in other places would not be easy. Of course, we don’t have the facilities of a research lab here. At the beginning I found it really hard – you can spend an hour just to get hold of basic materials. So I had to learn patience and make do with what I could find; that’s why I have to improvise a lot. But this can be a very interesting challenge. Often I set out with one idea and arrive at something completely different.

This has been a really rich experience. I have learned here how to manage a project under challenging conditions. I was only going to come for six months, but I’m enjoying so much what I’m doing, I will try to extend my stay.

Sarine

I joined Sacred Groves two years ago. Initially I only planned to be here for four months, but I am learning so many things here – it’s a special space, a very creative environment – that I stayed on.

Then I got to know about the work being done in Sacred Groves. When I saw what was happening here, I was very happy: there is so much experimentation in sustainable techniques, there is a strong work ethic, and the interns and volunteers mix together well.

I began by coordinating a small work project, then slowly I took up the responsibility of house mother. The social component is a very important part of this experiment. We have young people here from all over India, and we try to build a sense of family through sharing meals and celebrations together. We also come together four times a day in the circles. Here we firstly talk about the work, but after that we can express anything that is on our minds. If somebody has an issue, we try and solve it there and then.

It’s difficult for these young people to be suddenly in the middle of such an open society as Auroville. So we have basic guidelines, like no smoking or drinking on site. When I first came, there was a bit of an issue for a short time about people drinking alcohol and smoking in Center Field, but we spoke to them about it, they cooperated, and it has never happened since.

Another important guideline is to keep Sacred Groves clean. We segregate all the waste and try to avoid using plastic. As we are trying to achieve off-grid living here, we also have to learn to control our energy consumption as we are largely dependent on solar and wind.

In other words, in Sacred Groves we give a platform for people to change themselves. It’s up to them whether this happens or not, but I think most of them are trying to change.

Now we have found one place in India where they are really doing sustainable architecture. It gives us the confidence to try out these ideas ourselves: we really want to take what we have learned here out to the world. In fact, this is already happening. Sacred Groves is already having a big impact outside because people come here come from all over India and they take back what they have learned.