The lockdown basket service

May 2021: empty streets, sweltering heat, very few masked people on the road… Sounds like a scene from a post-apocalyptic movie, right? Drone’s eye view of the roundabout, the glint of a huge inverted disco ball in the sun. Solar Kitchen.

Zoom in on PTDC: closed, but not shut. Empty? No! A buzzing beehive best describes the ambience there: electric vehicles smoothly gliding to and from PTDC; baskets being (un)loaded; a constant hum from the office with people zipping in and out; food being prepared for take-away as usual in the back behind the loading/unloading station; baskets in various prepping stages grouped in clusters around the room; people whirring between baskets and counters…

During the first Corona wave in summer 2020, PTDC had its first experience of how an emergency food supply scenario could look like, with help from the working groups to get special travel authorisations to transport food from Pondicherry and elsewhere to Auroville. The consciously. Auroville app was developed in collaboration with Talam to help deliver food and other essentials within Auroville. On the basis of this, the Basket Service was initiated. Teamwork was essential right from the start, with Arul coordinating from the PTDC side, Satish in charge of deliveries and several other volunteers involved. In-shop sales continued throughout the whole lockdown, so the basket service was mainly used by PTDC 

members in quarantine, those among the high-risk age groups, those with co-morbidities, or those with mobility issues. This Phase 1 continued throughout the year on a small scale.

Summer 2021 was a whole new ball game. When the second wave hit India, the Government decided on new restrictions regarding food supply. It started with a week of “early shopping” which brought about a new operational challenge: instead of being able to collect goods during the usual eight hours of daily opening, the same needs had to be met within three hours. In order to serve the greatest number of members during this restricted time, PTDC developed an efficient method of service, streamlining the check-out procedure to ensure social distancing and avoid queuing. What helped was that there were enough volunteers to operate four checkout counters! Despite some PTDC users being grumpy about the whole situation, most of them were glad and expressed their relief about how PTDC organised things to meet this severe restriction of opening hours. “The really beautiful thing was that while some people really sucked out my energy, others gave a lot of energy and love back. It made all the frustrating moments easier to bear,” said Harishini, one of the PTDC volunteers.

Then, on the day before full lockdown, Sunday May 23rd, nearly 600 families went to pick up baskets of food, most of them full to the brim. Despite the queue already stretching out to the road at 9 am, the atmosphere was calm, concentrated and quiet. It was a very demanding day for the team but turned out to be a very rewarding community experience. Ivan, who grew up in Auroville and is in charge of refilling the grocery stocks, said at the end of the day that he most probably filled the rice containers as many times on that one day as he would normally do during a full week.

During the two-week full lockdown, we experienced a complete stop in food-related grocery shopping, but take-away and e-commerce were permitted. PTDC decided to set up systems for three lines of lockdown services: tiffin, bread and basket. However, the existing ordering app could not be used for this purpose, so they went back to basics with emails. At that point, all the PTDC members needed baskets of provisions to be delivered to their homes. The number of baskets increased exponentially during the first week: 30 requests the first day, 70 the next, then 140, then 245!!! For hours, volunteer Manojkumar ploughed through the emails and hand-processed the basket order lists of the day.

Thankfully, as PTDC focusses on bulk procurement, dry goods were stocked up well in advance. Even a variety of fresh produce was available throughout. However, the main challenge was to how to plan ahead and order the correct amount of fresh produce needed for the day, because they never knew how many orders would come in. Twice during these two weeks, PTDC could not finish the basket orders as there were not enough vegetables.

Behind this collective service is a management team composed of Anandi, Anne and Arul, and Andrea who joined the team for this emergency. The Basket Service work was initially coordinated by Arul and Priyan, with the help of a large team of volunteers. Ankita explained that the experience gained last year meant that most things already functioned well. This year, everything was also digitised to better coordinate between various team members.

What also really helped was the prevalent understanding that community resources need to be shared in this time of crisis: a number of electric vehicles from ITS and Visitors’ Centre – and sometimes even their drivers – were available to help out with deliveries, but also individuals and smaller services like Gas Service and Aikyam School, or a volunteer who offered to deliver individual baskets on his own bike. As Roshan explained, the whole process was quite smooth as the smart division of labour and the setting up of various work stations allowed every person to fully understand their job and fulfil it. Enthusiastic to learn each task in the whole process, the volunteers were just happy to help. As Ankita said: “There are no ‘thambi’ jobs in PTDC! Everyone understands the importance of each task, be it cleaning the baskets, printing out shopping lists or answering complaints.” Each person who joined brought a new set of skills or knowledge to the team, constantly putting forward ideas or proposals and improving the system.

Coincidentally, every time there was a void to fill or yet another aspect to organise, a new volunteer showed up “out of the blue” and took that on, like Cameron who dropped by one afternoon and ended up volunteering for several days, although that hadn’t been the initial purpose of her visit. Or Roshan who suddenly began working with Google Sheets for the first time in his life, helping Bindu and others better manage the basket delivery system by clubbing orders by clusters of communities, saving the delivery team a lot of time. Ankita, who also works in Youthlink added: “The young energy was very nice to see in this whole effort. I think it’s worth mentioning some of the amazing people who helped: Anand, Arun, Ivan, Kani, Kavi, Manoj, Mélodie, Punyakodi, Terenti.” And so many more.

As their experience grew, the time needed to complete a full Basket Service cycle diminished – from receiving the email to bringing back the empty basket to PTDC. The machine was so well oiled that there were even moments where the volunteers were overcome with a sense of wonder: things were falling into place and happening without any action required on their part. The team shared that there was something else at work, a force, helping them do the impossible.

Volunteering in PTDC taught many team members that there is so much to learn about working in a team, about doing numerous tasks, and about caring for the community, our big 

family. A set system was evidently needed to deal with the situation, but special care and attention was given to every single PTDC participant under the heading “The Power of Community”. On top of stretching their work timings to try to do it all, there were many examples of volunteers going the extra mile and dropping off a forgotten item on their way home at the end of the day or contacting some seniors who hadn’t sent an email requesting a basket to check up on them.  For example, Arul once woke up very early, remembering a forgotten basket, and personally delivered it at 6 am, before his 16-hour workday started.

Despite all these efforts, some customers were dissatisfied with the size of their onions, or ordered disproportion quantities of goods, while the team had to decipher vague orders like “a handful of beans”. The communication part was maybe the biggest challenge: in spite of prior guidance, some participants were still unsure as to the ordering protocol so they would send several emails, making it very confusing for the team to follow at times. Understandably, some requests such as “Don’t break the crackers!” fell through the cracks.

Nevertheless, most people (around 70%) were super enthusiastic and greeted the PTDC delivery team with smiles. The more organised communities, like Arati, Dana and Maitreye, had community coordinators to facilitate the delivery part. The Evergreen community even organised a squad of cheerleaders.

All in all, the interviewees (Ankita, Arul, Harishini, Priyanand Roshan) readily agreed that they all just really had fun! The internal dynamics of the team was good, everyone was united in their mission, diversity contributed to efficiency. This all participated in fostering a feeling of belonging and service. “Despite being born and growing up in Auroville, I never worked here,” says Priyan, “so I finally got a solid work experience where I truly feel like I helped the community. I really enjoy working in a community service like PTDC, so I’m going to stay here.”

Laughingly, but also quite seriously, they suggested that a programme be set up along the lines of “Learn civic responsibility for three months in PTDC. Young and old, AV Youth and Newcomer, and everyone in between is welcome to attend!”