The employees of Auroville

They work in our gardens, our homes, our services and units, in our schools and health centres, at the Town Hall, at Matrimandir. Yet while, in many ways, they are the engine house of Auroville, the people who keep it running, they are also often “invisible”. They do not feature in the community’s brochures, most visiting journalists and researchers do not write about them, they are not consulted when important decisions are taken about the community’s future, and most Aurovilians know so little about them: about their lives, their hopes, their challenges. We don’t even know how many there are.  

The last comprehensive survey of workers in Auroville was done in 2000. In that year there were 4179 employees and 3709 of these were surveyed, of whom 2971 were permanent employees and 738 were contract workers. Since then, apart from a more limited survey of institutional employees in commercial units in December, 2016, nobody has attempted to find out how many people come to work in Auroville every day. The figure of 5,000 has been bandied about for years, but nobody really knows. 

The 2000 survey did, however, yield some interesting findings, many of which are still very relevant today, according to Harini Sampathkumar of Auroville’s Social Research Centre (SRC). There was a high level of job satisfaction (around 70%) and safety and cleanliness in the workplace and the employer/employee relationship were also rated very highly. No doubt this explains why 80% of respondents said that being employed in Auroville was looked upon as a good thing in the surrounding villages. However, employees’ feelings about their salary were not so positive.

In the survey, 28% of them felt their wages were ‘poor’, and 52% only ‘fair’. “This means they felt the wages are not good, but they didn’t want to say it negatively,” explains Harini. “If you ask them today they will definitely say the wages are not good, even though they tend to compare Auroville wages with Pondicherry where the daily rate may be higher, but where there is no holiday pay or bonuses and, often, little job security.”

Financial pressure

In fact, when asked what she considers is the biggest concern of Auroville workers today, she is forthright: “The biggest challenge by far, 99.99%, is financial. And this is true not only of Auroville workers, but also of the villages today and also of a large cross-section of the residents of Auroville. Many of the people are living on the edge because they are in debt, some heavily. In 2000 life was still manageable, now it is a continual strain.”

Why?

Harini thinks there are a number of factors. One is the increasing influence of globalisation and the consumer culture that accompanies this. “You see it on the television and definitely want to be part of that; to have a motorcycle, a car, a cell phone etc.  It’s a huge pressure to go immediately from the bullock cart to the rocket, skipping the steps in between, and hence you end up taking loans for a lifestyle you cannot afford.”

Another factor is the privatisation of education and healthcare. Most Auroville workers now send their children to private schools or colleges or, when it comes to healthcare, choose expensive private hospitals and doctors rather than free government facilities, because of the belief that  when you pay for it, you get a better product.  

 “This is not true,” says Harini. “JIPMER, the government hospital near Auroville, has some of the best doctors and facilities in India, while many of the private engineering colleges that have sprouted up everywhere are third-rate institutions.”

Harini points out that the aspirations of many Auroville employees for their children are unrealistic. “Many of our employees, those who work in the forests, homes etc. are not even first generation literates (in the 2000 survey, of all the workers surveyed 25% were illiterate and most of the others had less than a 10th standard education). They believe that if they can get their son or daughter into a college, after graduation he or she will be automatically earning one lakh a month in an IT firm in Chennai.  But this happens in only a few cases – many remain unemployed and unemployable because of the poor training they have received, or because they don’t want to leave home to take their chance in the bigger cities. 

“But their parents have either sold land or have taken a loan from the bank or from private money lenders to pay for this education, and these loans have to be repaid. If the children can’t get a high paying job, which is the case almost all the time, the parents fall into a debt cycle from which they cannot come out.”

And then, of course, there are the marriages and other expensive social obligations. Harini mentions her household help who lives very simply. The only working member of her family, she doesn’t have electricity or gas in her home, yet she ran up a huge three lakhs debt in getting her two daughters married. All of her life she will not be able to repay this from her work income. And this is not an exceptional case. A lot of our workers are living on a knife edge, under extreme financial stress, due to their increased vulnerability. I feel strongly that Auroville has a role to play here. I don’t know how, but for many individuals there’s something bubbling away and the slightest thing can make it go up in flames.” 

Limited promotion possibilities?

In the 2000 survey, only about 5% of employees described their promotion possibilities and opportunities for further learning on the job as ‘good’. Could Auroville do more to provide in-service training for those from the local area to help them acquire new skills and a better salary?

Harini is doubtful. She points out that we have different levels of workers. “We have manual workers but what can they get promoted to?  Perhaps after years of experience they will supervise three or four other workers but basically they will still be a mason or a gardener.  Then we have the semi-skilled people, like tailors. They may end up doing quality control in a factory but this is not a big promotion.  A tailor does not become a designer.  In this sense, cottage industries – which are the majority of our commercial units – do not provide much scope for promotion.

“In a bigger unit you are looking at a different skill set.  In Auroville, no more than 30 units will require professional managerial skills, and the Aurovilians who are running them now will not spend time and money in training managers, in bringing them up through the ranks, they will just hire them from outside. Maybe now the younger generation has that capacity, but they are still young and need to gain experience elsewhere before coming back to manage a big Auroville unit.”

Understanding the deeper purpose

How well do our employees understand the deeper purpose of Auroville?  Harini feels that in the early years when people from the village were coming and working on the land with Aurovilians they understood Auroville better than today, “not in words, but in something else.  They were sharing our ragi porridge, our simple living, our hardship and our passion; so they could get ‘it’ in another way that was beyond words.  The spark was there.  

“In fact, this is in line with what Mother said when answering a question about how the Aurovilians should relate to the local villagers. She said that the best way would be education by example: that when they are closely mixing in the life and work of Aurovilians, they not only would get influenced by it and start changing, but also start becoming curious and asking questions. And that is when they could be told more about the purpose of this place. 

“But that spark died between that generation and the next generation, because Auroville was developing and there was no longer any time to spend together like this.”

In fact, the 2000 survey showed that Auroville employees, most of whom were second generation,  understood very little about the deeper purpose of Auroville. For most of them, Auroville was simply a place that offered job opportunities. Harini doesn’t think this has changed. “If you ask them about this today, at most you will receive a pat reply that Auroville is about human unity.”

The 2000 survey’s conclusion was clear on what needed to happen: “Information dissemination about Auroville, on its ideals and its charter and exposure to Auroville not just through their work situation, should be an active role for the Auroville community to undertake.”

A paradigm shift needed

So why has this not happened? Is it something to do with the way we view employees? Although some have become Aurovilians, is our relationship primarily instrumental – are they seen merely as a means of getting certain things done, a house cleaned, a unit producing more products – rather than something deeper? Is there a need for a major paradigm shift: to consider Auroville’s employees as collaborators in the Auroville experiment rather than people who just service it? 

Harini has no doubts about this. 

“I believe very deeply that we have to see them as collaborators, because this is to collaborate with the vision of this experiment.” But she is aware that this will not be easy. 

“It means, to begin with, listening more and therefore learning more. But many of us don’t want to know too much about other’s lives, it’s a headache.  Then there is fear:  if seen as collaborators, they are our equals and the terms of the relationship will change.  This is why sometimes I am doubtful about this happening soon. I feel we have to get bangs on the heads for people to get together.  Collaboration happens effectively when there is adversity.

“When the Thane cyclone happened I thought it would be a turning point regarding strengthening the relationship both among the Aurovilians and between the Aurovilians and the workers. But we missed that bus.”

So are there one or two things we can do now to start building a different relationship with our employees?

“In two words, ‘Be nice’.  You never know what is happening in their lives, what have been the circumstances that morning before they come to you for work at eight o’clock.  Somebody destroyed their fence or stole something, maybe a sudden death in the family, but you won’t know unless you ask. If you close yourself, there is no opportunity for the entry of that other life. And try not to make overbearing judgments. If an employee falls ill, and we ask ‘Did you go to a doctor?’ and they say ‘We went to a faith healer’, don’t rubbish this.  It’s their reality; it’s what they believe in, so respect that. The problem is we think we know. Actually nobody does, but we are in a superior position and hence we think we know.” 

But Harini believes there is a possibility for a deeper learning and exchange to happen. She has often been asked to address groups of employees who visit Matrimandir. “Just organising such a visit is a good beginning.  It’s a way of saying that Auroville is not just a workplace where people work and get paid.  I tell them, ‘You are born free, alone, and when you die, you die alone. But from the moment you start breathing, your socialisation process is framing you into what you think you are.  But your contact with the Divine is unique. So can you spend some time here for the next half an hour to experience that your soul is the true you, and the Divine is the Divine and there is nobody else in between.  Can you do that?’  And they get it.  It makes it meaningful for them.”

Harini also mentions something else. “In the end, people know that from the foreigners in Auroville there is no falseness.  They may be rude sometimes, but they are honest and truthful: foreigners don’t have to fear ‘losing face’ which, being a heavy Asian trait, is something our villagers recognize well.  This is something villagers appreciate, and this is something we can build upon.”