An Auroville working group in transition

When I began serving as the secretary to the Funds and Assets Management Committee (FAMC) in December 2010, there were twelve men, including the Secretary, Auroville Foundation, as well as the Finance and Administration officer, Auroville Foundation, and one woman member.

I remember noticing immediately that this configuration did not represent our community at all well. But I certainly was in no position to do anything about it. Working groups sent their chosen representative to the FAMC and that was that. Admittedly, over the years I did start, somewhat jokingly, asking specifically for the representative to please be a woman but I don’t think it was until 2014 that a second woman member arrived.

The FAMC has a far-reaching range of responsibilities. The members are responsible for creating policies concerning funds and assets of Auroville and ensuring those policies are applied in daily operations. The FAMC collaborates with the Land Board (previously the Land Consolidation Committee) in moving land exchange and purchase transactions to completion. It supports the Housing Service and Housing Board for loan requests and in implementing the Housing Policy. It cooperates with the Working Committee on issues such as the annual consolidation of accounts, and with L’Avenir d’Auroville, otherwise known as the Town Development Council (TDC), in ascertaining the financial viability of public projects such as housing, health, etc. It reviews and approves the creation of all commercial unit and service activities, including the appointment of executives. With the Working Committee, the FAMC oversees the review of trustee appointments, and from time to time, the creation of new Trusts under the Auroville Foundation. And then, of course, there are all the ‘other topics’ that arise which usually are concerning a conflict or allegations of wrongdoing, or unclarity in process or policy.

Many of the issues we deal with are challenging. They include housing stewardship questions; weighing the financial liability of a public project, such as housing, in relation to the benefit to Aurovilians; deciding where and when to purchase land; investigating allegations of financial and asset mismanagement; and reviewing project proposals that bring up challenging questions like, “Are cash transactions OK here?”, “Do we need this in the City Area?”

In the beginning I inquired about process and came to realize, fairly quickly, that generally things were considered ‘case by case’. I sat in the meetings, week after week, taking notes and being as sponge-like as possible, soaking it all in. I soon observed that the members didn’t have ample time to give much consideration to the matters at hand because each one was fairly busy with other work, such as running a unit, or serving in town planning and development, or working at one of the schools, or running a farm, etc. Each member already had a ‘full time job’. And because of this fractured focus, when it came time to meet once a week, there were a lot of holes in the available information. Research into a topic was often half-baked. A lot of time and energy went into hashing out what individuals happened to know, or speculation on what they didn’t know. It just wasn’t efficient. Members expressed frustration. And the Aurovilians waiting to hear from the FAMC expressed dismay at the amount of time it took to get an answer. I found it amazing that things did get done ... eventually.

Over the years, as current members left and new ones joined, the conversations increasingly were taking place over email during the week between meetings so when the members came together for that one afternoon, more information had been shared and taken into consideration. This meant better-informed decisions were being made. I was providing the team consistency in preparing for the meetings, distributing meeting minutes, and following-up and following-up. Did I say following-up? Most of the work happened outside the meetings, as is usual.

As the months and years rolled on, the faces changed. Someone would leave their primary work and that would mean a new representative would be sent to the FAMC. This created some hiccups in our slowly transforming processes but since the majority of the members remained, the new ones had time to pick up on what was happening and how things were done.

Meanwhile, the FAMC workload was increasing steadily and considerably. The situations being presented to the members became markedly more complex and I was working tirelessly to create a framework of clarity, consistency, reliability and cohesion. Part of this framework included having a regular chairperson for the meetings. In October 2012, I was requested to take on this additional responsibility. It was clear to me that to be effective there needed to be mutual respect and trust, so I consciously strove to create an environment where anyone could say what they needed while providing an atmosphere of care for each individual.

A few other changes made the team increasingly dynamic: more women entering the conversation, some decisions being made via email, holding the meeting in the Town Hall, inviting guests regularly in order to review challenging situations as well as proposed policies, and adding a second weekly meeting.

In May 2012, the FAMC initiated a comprehensive participatory process to update the FAMC mandate to reflect the reality of the work. After a lot of subgroups, reworkings, and a couple of general meetings followed by more adjustments, there was a Residents’ Assembly (RA) decision-making event conducted in January 2014 on a new FAMC mandate. The outcome was unexpected: not enough residents participated in the process so there was no quorum to make a decision. The Residents’ Assembly Service who facilitated the process, didn’t quite know what to do. The matter was taken up finally by the Auroville Council (AVC) in September 2014 and from there it was taken out of the FAMC’s hands.

The AVC constituted a subgroup that took another year to bring their version of the FAMC mandate to a point where it could be presented to the RA for a decision. In April 2016, the RA finally approved what is now the FAMC mandate. There are three significant changes in the new mandate. Firstly, it is now the “Funds and Assets Management Committee (FAMC) of the Residents Assembly”. The previous mandate gave one the sense that the FAMC was directly accountable to the Governing Board (GB). However, the GB was not directly involved in the workings or decisions of the FAMC on anything like a regular basis. The FAMC reported to the RA monthly and it was high time to make that accountability abundantly clear. Secondly, members would be selected in an open process, based on their willingness to serve and skills and ability, and not on the basis of being part of a specific work area. Thirdly, the emphasis now is on the ideals of Auroville and creating a new economy. The new mandate covers six pages. The expectations are set out in black and white; the bar has been raised.

So, who is this new ‘super group’? The nine members have been selected from the community during an Residents’ Assembly-approved selection process that took place over three days. The members stand on their own merit: skill, capacity, experience, knowledge, goodwill, and willingness to serve. We are four women and five men. Two previous FAMC members were selected to serve under this new mandate. And I was called upon to change my role from secretary to member.

There is understandable frustration with the level of inefficiency at the moment. Some amount of inefficiency is to be expected considering an increasing workload with six out of nine members being pretty new to the game. Recently, we had a four page agenda for a meeting. That was a little bit difficult to face. Thankfully, for several weeks we’ve had a regular secretary to prepare meeting agendas, attend meetings to take notes and prepare minutes, as well as a chairperson to help us with our collective discipline. To further support our process, we all agree that an issue tracker should be implemented to assign tasks to subgroups, and set ‘to dos’ and deadlines that can easily be monitored. We’ve been trying some online tools but we’ve still not found the one that meets all our various needs.

I am feeling very ‘bridge-like’ these days, spanning the space between the outgoing and incoming members. I am also on a journey from being the secretary to becoming a full team member, a co-creator and decision-maker. I find myself in the weekly meetings having to hold back from directing the conversation, or bringing the matter to a conclusion, or asking someone to please stay on the topic. I also still have to do quite a bit of the paperwork. I haven’t asked any of my colleagues if they might like to help out with it. And I find that when scheduling additional meetings I just do it instead of looking to other team members to take on the responsibility. For the first weeks I didn’t say much. I am so used to listening, synthesizing in my mind what is emerging during the sharing. One day I heard the voice inside of my head say, “Amy, speak up. You have something to contribute to this conversation.” So now I am speaking up but I still prefer to listen. And because I was the document keeper, I am often doing a lot of extra legwork, providing the team with history and explanations. This makes me feel like I have my “secretary” hat on but at the same time, I give my ‘2 paisa’ and that helps me to develop the growing sense of being an equal member of this new team.

Sometimes it feels like a lot to carry but I’m not alone and with a humble heart and quiet centeredness I trust that the Grace will guide me.