The new selection policy

Over the years, the community has selected members to serve in its major working groups. In the early years, this was comparatively simple, as there were few residents and only one or two such groups, and everybody knew each other well.

The members of these groups were chosen in community meetings. However, as the population grew, the number of these working groups proliferated, and their power increased, and more formal methods of selection were adopted. Consensus, although still recognized as the ideal, was increasingly abandoned in favour of voting. At the same time, there were an increasing trend of individuals seeking selection to major groups not because they wanted to serve the larger community, but because they had a specific agenda they wished to promote/implement, or because they wanted to further the interests of a certain group. And this led to politicking - to some individuals seeking votes or to groups supporting their candidates.

The last selection process represented possibly the lowest point in this decline as ballot boxes were tampered with, and some individuals were selected with only about 30% of the total votes which were cast by only a small percentage of the total adult population.

It was a shock and a wake-up call for the whole community. An investigation was made, and the investigating group came up with some recommendations. These were that the process to select members of working groups by the residents should foster trust, harmony and human unity, not division. Therefore any selection process should avoid voting, because this promotes politics and political polarisation.

A call went out to the community to join a Selection Process Review Task Force (SPRTF) which was tasked with coming up with a new selection process based upon these recommendations. Twelve people put their names forward, out of whom the Council chose seven by random selection. Of these seven, some dropped out, one sadly passed away, and in the end only three finished the job, one working remotely.

Their initial proposal was brought to a community meeting. After receiving feedback, they made a number of amendments, then brought a new draft to a second community meeting where it was agreed that the new process for selecting members of the Working Committee, Auroville Council, FAMC, Entry Board, and ATDC would be submitted to the community for a Residents Assembly Decision (RAD).

On the 19th April, the Residents Assembly Service (RAS) announced the result of the RAD. 95% (349) Aurovilians voted in favour of the new proposal, 5% (19) rejected it. Consequently, the RAS announced that the new selection policy would be implemented.

What is new?

Because of the need to avoid politics and voting, the Selection Task Force fairly quickly decided there should be some kind of randomness in the process to avoid the selection being easily influenced by different groups. They decided that the actual selection should be made not by the whole community but by a group of randomly chosen community members. In a similar manner to the Citizens’ Assembly experiment, these would receive training in bias detection and consensus building, as well as information about the qualities and skills needed in the different working groups they were selecting for, in order to give them the skills and knowledge to do this important work.

The Task Force also decided that the forty randomly chosen selectors together would interview all the applicants, but then they would split into four groups to make their decisions independently, so that there would be no cross-influencing.

If all four groups selected the same person for a working group position, the selection of that person would be confirmed. If positions still needed to be filled in the working group (s), there would be a second round. In this round, the selection groups would be told who had been already been selected, and who were the ongoing members of a working group. So now they could make a further selection on the basis of which skills or qualities they felt the working group was still missing, and which people they felt would be able to work together well. In other words, now they were choosing a group as well as individuals.

Once again, in the second round the remaining candidates chosen by all four groups would be considered selected. Other candidates who had been selected by at least two of the groups would have their names put in an opaque container or entered in a computer programme. If they had been nominated by three groups their name would be included three times in the ‘hat’, twice if nominated by two groups. Then the names would be drawn randomly to fill the remaining positions. 

However, there would be no obligation on the selection teams to select people for all the vacant positions on the working group. If the teams felt that not enough candidates were suitable, those positions would remain vacant, and a new selection process for that working group could be scheduled.

The new selection process is very much built upon trust. Trust that a random selection of Aurovilians will make wise decisions, once they have received training and appropriate information about the task. But they are also trusted to make their own decision within their sub-groups about how they select candidates. They will receive feedback from the community regarding the candidates, but it is up to them to decide if the feedback will influence their choice, as no candidate will be disqualified beforehand. Again, if the people in a sub-group cannot reach consensus, and if they think voting is a good thing, they can adopt that method. Also, if they want a facilitator, they can ask for it. It is completely up to them.

One strong feedback from the larger community on the drafts of the new policy, a feedback which was not incorporated, was a request to include a de-selection process as it was felt that the existing process – which allows only the working group to de-select one or more of its members – was inadequate to deal with the present situation, in which two major working groups have lost the confidence of part of the community.

However, this request came late when only three were left in the original Process Review Task Force, and it would have required much more work. Instead, the Council has been asked to take up the de-selection process as a priority.

Meanwhile, the overwhelming support given to the new selection policy by those who voted in the RAD indicates not only that many in the community are ready for a change, but also they feel that this proposal will go some way towards fostering a new spirit of trust and collaboration, rather than that of division, when it comes to selecting people for our key working groups.

Let us hope that these hopes are fulfilled.