In the eye of the storm: the Residents’ Assembly Service

Auroville Today: You recently emailed the community asking all residents to remain respectful in their communication with you and address any concerns in a civil and kind way. You also added a list of questions and answers. Could you explain why this was necessary?

Tatiana: When we were organizing the Residents’ Assembly Decision (RAD) on the question of the de-selection of the Working Committee members, we received quite a number of insults and unsubstantiated accusations. The quality of the communication was below any acceptable level, such as that the RAS was “nothing but a puppet show, a façade for the cult doctrine”, that we stood for “ignorance and manipulation”, that we were “corrupted people who brainwash people”, and that we “fueled hatred and segregation and character assassination.” One person summarized it with a “Go to Hell RAS!” We explained the obvious to the community: that all this doesn’t lead to a constructive collaborative way of addressing concerns and doesn’t suit our spiritual aims.

Did it impact you?

Tatiana: I have been working for the RAS for about seven years, and this is not the first time that this type of dirt was thrown on the team, and it seems I should have already got immune to this kind of attitude. Yet it’s shocking; sometimes I take it quite personally, and it even affects my physical health. It took some time before I was able not to react and restore my inner calm. To some extent that has been successful as I always try to view things through the lens of yoga. But it still is a work in progress.

Giovanni: Initially, I kept pretty cool, even though I felt personally attacked. But there was a different type of frustration: don’t these people remember that we are all brothers and sisters, members of the same family, all claiming to live with The Mother’s guidance? Don’t they realize what they inflict, and what consequences this has for themselves and our family?

Dan: I had never imagined that such a level of violence was possible. Of course, I first took it personally. And like Giovanni, I wondered how this could happen and why people couldn’t be more respectful to one another when we all live in this beautiful spiritual atmosphere.

Sathish: The way I experienced it was, “that’s how it is”. I have been part of organizing many RADs and have seen from close-up how a hot topic is always contested by one group or another, in particular when they see that the outcome won’t go the way they want. I took it like that. An RAD is not going to satisfy everybody, and criticism is nothing new. But this time, the criticism was more intense than I have ever experienced. It seemed that it had a purpose, that it was part of a conscious attempt to prevent this RAD from happening. For we did not receive this type of negative feedback when we organized the last RAD held in April, about a new selection policy [see AVToday # 394, eds.].

In your Questions and Answers document you explain that the RAS is a community service with as only mandate organizing meetings and decisions of the Residents’ Assembly. 

Dan: Some residents apparently believed that the RAS was making decisions on its own. We don’t. We just follow our mandate and policies. And our policies specify that we have to initiate a RAD process on a topic proposed by at least 60 residents as was the case for the last RAD. There were people who asked us not to proceed with this RAD, but we cannot make such decisions. People responded that we are biased: but that is absolutely not true.

Sathish: The Auroville residents approved the Interim RAD Policy 2021 in October last year in an emergency RAD called by the then Working Committee. It was approved, with the understanding that within the next nine months the community will be asked to vote on a fully overhauled Residents’ Assembly Decision Making Process. This is still to happen. The Auroville Council is working on it, and we assume that in the process also the mandate of the RAS will become better specified. 

On May 7th, the RAS and the Working Committee received a letter from Mr. Seetharaman, the Officer on Special Duty of the Auroville Foundation, informing that the Governing Board directs the Residents Assembly to pause any decisions taken by the Resident Assembly before the updating of the Register of Residents; that all current ongoing activities such as with the RAD (Residents Assembly’s decision-making processes) are to be stopped with immediate effect until the Register of Residents (RoR) has been fully updated; and that any such decision taken before updating the RoR will be invalid, null and void. What was your response?

Sathish: Surprise, mostly, in particular as we were informed about this letter only the evening before the last voting day, Sunday May 8th. We wondered why this letter came now (perhaps there are genuine reasons and intentions), one day before the closure of the RAD. The voting had been spread out over two weeks. We discussed among the team how to move on and decided to continue the ongoing process, and we announced the results a few days later to the Residents’ Assembly followed by notifying the Working Committee.

Dan: Previously, the office of the Auroville Foundation had asked the Working Committee and RAS for details on the RADs we did in the past. Evidently, they considered the responses as not satisfactory.

Sathish: The letter of Mr. Seetharaman focuses on the RoR, which is to be maintained by the Secretary of the Auroville Foundation in accordance with section 18 of the Auroville Foundation Act and which contains the names of all residents of Auroville aged 18 years and above. We were surprised that the letter mentioned that it had not been updated since 2005, the more so as we knew that the Auroville Foundation, in cooperation with a former Working Committee, in the years 2019-2020 had issued Auroville Foundation Identity Cards to about a 1,000 Aurovilians, in the process of which the Register got updated, making it obvious that the RoR updating was an ongoing progress.

Tatiana: In any case, we have not been using the data from the RoR, we have been using the data from the Auroville Master List maintained by Auroville’s Residents’ Service. This list is far more extensive than the RoR, as it contains the data of all Auroville residents, newcomers and children, and is daily updated.

In the early days we would consult the RoR. This changed when the Working Committee in April 2021 decided that people who had been confirmed as Aurovilian by the Entry Board, but whose names had not yet been entered into the RoR, could also participate in RADs. This decision was made as there were delays at the Foundation office in registering people who had been confirmed by the Entry Board. These people are called ‘Confirmed Aurovilian’, to distinguish them from the Auroville residents registered in the RoR. This decision was explicitly approved by the residents when the RA in October last year voted in favor of the Interim RAD Policy 2021.

According to RAD Policy: “Only confirmed Aurovilians can participate in decision-making. Those who have been announced as confirmed Aurovilians by the Entry Board are eligible to participate in all community decision-making processes along with those who have been entered into the Register of Residents maintained by the Secretary’s Office. It does not include under 18-year-olds, newcomers and any other Auroville statuses.”

In your Question and Answer document, you mention that you continue updating your mailing list to match with the Master List maintained by the Residents’ Service. You mention that in accordance with the Master List database, on 2nd May 2022, a total of 2,391 residents could participate in a RAD vote, but you were ‘missing’ 329 residents - either because they had voluntary unsubscribed from your mailing list (129 people) or had not communicated their email address to the RAS (200 people). 

Sathish: For years we have been actively trying to reach out to everybody to obtain their contact data. In December 2020, when the allegations of Mr. Vikram Ram were discussed by the community in an open meeting [see AVToday # 366], a number of residents even did a massive amount of work to check the contact data of all those who attended that meeting and cross-check them with the Master List. And we continue that work, for people regularly change their contact data such as their email address. But not everybody is interested or wishes to share their contact data. Sometimes we meet a blank wall.

Dan: But there seems to be a positive move. In the last months quite a few people came to our office who confessed that this was the first time they came to the Town Hall. In that way we got a lot more contact data.

Does the absence of these people’s email addresses affect your RAD?

Giovanni: No. Our calls to participate in an RAD are not only sent to each individual by email, but are also posted on the Auronet, in the News and Notes, by mass bulletin and through posters and flyers hung in public places. We send out reminders every few days. A resident can vote by email or in person, which can be done during our working hours or on the last Sunday of the voting period. We have seen an increase of participation, from around 300 a year ago to about 900 now. That’s about 37% of the Auroville residents. But we would like to encourage even more people to participate actively.

Sathish: The reality is that many people are not aware of what’s going on. Since long we have been considering doing a survey asking why people do not want to participate. We can make assumptions, but the only way to know is to ask.

Dan: We should find a way to ensure that each individual Aurovilian is well-informed. I spoke to people who did not vote, and who expressed their disgust with what had happened. But they also clearly stated that the fact that they did not vote did not mean they agreed with one side or the other.

Tatiana: I think we need to restructure the way we function to reach out to more people, perhaps by using the concept of human networking and creating a pool of resource people, each relating to a different segment of the community. Many people need some basic education about how Auroville functions and what the issues are. Auroville has no system yet to provide that information.

The Foundation has stated that the RADs can resume after the RoR has been updated, and it has sent out an email to all Aurovilians requesting to update their data. Given the fact that you have not managed to reach out to everybody, how do you think the Auroville Foundation will be able to update its RoR?

Sathish: I do not believe they can do it in a few weeks, unless they go from door to door. I think it will take some time considering the total adult population of Auroville as maintained by the Residents Service’s Master List database. 

What effect will this have?

Sathish: We have just announced the new selection process of members of the five main working groups (the Working Committee, the Auroville Council, the Funds and Assets Management Committee, the Entry Board and the Auroville Town Development Council), and people have started sending in their nominations. We then received an email from the “Working Committee approved by the Secretary” asking us to postpone the selection process until the RoR has been updated.

Giovanni: We replied explaining that, as we see it, the RoR is not at stake in the newly approved selection process, for there is no final vote but the selection is done by 40 randomly selected residents. Anyway, while this period of uncertainty goes on, our RAS team remains positive, and, as always, at the exclusive service of our Community.