The Active Residents Assembly initiative

One of the strongest messages to emerge out of the Retreat discussions was the need to re-examine our present organizational structure, to make it more reflective of our core values and ideals and to strengthen the role of the Residents’ Assembly.

The Governance Task Force took this up and made one of its first priorities the creation of an Active Residents Assembly (ARA). The ARA is open to all Aurovilians and Newcomers, and its members commit to reading relevant background material and attending regular meetings to build agreements and solutions for the community’s various problems and challenges. Although the ARA has no formal decision-making power, it is hoped that its work will increase the quality and participation in our Residents’ Assembly decision-making meetings.

The ARA pays particular attention to the way they meet together as, in the past, community meetings have often been fraught with personal disagreements. ARA members agree on the need to create a spirit of harmony and solidarity in their interactions and to seek solutions that integrate and reconcile all sides of an issue or problem. They also aspire to give intuition a major role in the discovery of integral solutions.

The Vision statement of the ARA is as follows:

As committed members of the ARA, Aurovilians offer their participation towards renewing and enhancing the capacity and effectiveness, as well as the Spirit, of the Residents Assembly, with an aim for building Human Unity and Peace in the community. Members participate with openness to learning and growing in a spirit of Sincere Service, Collaboration and Goodwill, where the evolution of a Learning Society becomes central to the collective development.

The community’s response to the ARA initiative has been promising. So far, over 100 people have signed up and two introductory meetings have been held. In the first meeting, the ARA began the process of deciding which topics they felt were the most fundamental issues to be solved if the community was to make progress towards its ideals. Many of the issues listed out, like housing, increased youth participation and a better community decision-making process, were clearly interrelated.

No clear decisions were taken at the first meeting, and those members of the ARA who did not attend were invited to send their suggestions, which resulted in a consolidated list of challenges (see box). The second introductory meeting evinced a strong spirit of harmony and the eventual decision to allow a small team of ARA members to choose the topic for the first full meeting, as well as to plan the process for how we would meet together.

Ultimately, we do not know what will emerge from the ARA experiment. The pull of old meeting habits remains strong. At the same time, now there is a very strong aspiration to move beyond the old polarities and our narrow personality-based preoccupations to seek solutions that will benefit the community as a whole and lead us closer to our ideals.

It should be noted that the ARA is only one part of the proposed changes to be made to the Residents Assembly and the decision-making process. The other changes include expanding the role of the Residents Assembly Service (RAS). This would allow it, among other things, to more efficiently gather all the relevant information on a particular issue, to share it with the larger community and to receive and review feedback.

1. The need for a clear and inclusive decision-making process ratified by the RA which fosters the spirit of unity. Without this, we won’t be able to change what need to be changed or reorganized.

2. Housing: the housing problem is one of the major bottlenecks for Auroville’s growth.

3. Managing our water resources. A plan of action needs to be decided upon.

4. Selecting the right people to occupy administrative positions. This is imperative as the wrong people do not have the discrimination to choose what is appropriate for Auroville.

5. Move from a ‘each one to himself’ kind of society to a society where people care for each other.

6. Clarification of the status and direction of our Town Development Council

7. Establishing trust between us and overcoming fear.

8. We need to establish trust between the larger community and the work groups.

9. The collective needs to be empowered.

10. Increase the influence of our ideals in our everyday lives. Finding new ways of encouraging people to act in accordance with our ideals.

11. Increasing understanding of and establishing faith in the larger purpose of Auroville.

12. Putting the aspiration for the Divine at the centre of our lives and revisiting governance, education and the economy from this perspective instead of being guided by our egos.

13. The need to bridge the gap with the local Aurovilians.

14. The need to attract and engage the youth in all our activities.

15. Transparency is the one major element to be fully established in order for the collective to move forward.

16. Make our economy reflect The Dream and as well as be self-supporting.

17. We need to look at the fact that many Aurovilians are working outside Auroville. What implications does this have for Auroville’s development?

18. A mobility plan for Auroville has to be evolved to control profusion of cars.

19. The need to access intuitive intelligence and make it more central in our lives.

20. Solve the issue around the Matrimandir gardens and benches.

21. Create a justice system in Auroville.

22. Reduce our policies, rules, regulations as they are negative, based on problems not our ideals.

23. Draw up an Auroville constitution.

24. Make the entry process a genuinely welcoming process.

25. The need to take joyful responsibility for one’s own life and development.