“We are vastly under-utilised”

“We are not being recognized,” complains Jacques. “The Auroville Road Service has an impressive history: it built all the existing paver block roads in Auroville, starting in 2007 with the first paved road from the Matrimandir Visitors’ entrance to the Savitri Bhavan turnoff. Later we built the Surrender Road, the Vikas radial, the road past the Kindergarten, the road in front of the Solar Kitchen, the Solar Kitchen roundabout and the roads in the Kottakarai area. After a bad experience with an outside supplier regarding pavers quality we opted to manufacture the blocks ourselves ensuring even quality and standard size. We also made the kerbs and whatever else was needed. Only the road from the Edaiyanchavady tar road to the Visitors’ Centre was not made by us; it was built and donated by NLC India ltd, the Neyveli Lignite Corporation.

“So we are a bit upset that nobody from the Town Development Council even talked to us about the Crown Road and that we did not receive an invitation to tender for its construction. All that the TDC asked us to do is to clear bushes for a cycle path, from Savitri Bhavan to Serendipity and level the cleared area of the Bliss Forest. This had to be done urgently, probably in view of the visit of the Minister of Health of the Central Government who was invited to cycle along the Crown. But for constructing the Crown, we have been completely ignored.”

It pains in more than one way. The Road Service struggles to survive, its equipment is old, and an order for making the Crown would have been a tremendous push. It is therefore difficult to understand that Auroville is now using the Central Public Works Department (CPWD) to do construction in Auroville. The CPWD floated the tender for the Crown. “We heard through the grapevine that the winner is a company from Tirupur which quoted 9.3 crores for the work. It would have been better if that money had stayed in Auroville and would have been allocated to the Road Service, which after all is an Auroville unit,” says Jacques.

The Road Service survives in part on a monthly repair budget allocated by the Budget Coordination Committee; the rest comes from paid work. “We have two teams,” explains Manickam. “I am responsible for the 7-member maintenance team. We repair and maintain the roads and the cycle paths in the City area, up to the Outer Ring Road. Jacques manages the development team of about 10 people. This team does paid work, such as digging trenches for optical fibre and electrical cables, laying sewer pipes and doing road repair work for communities outside the city area.”

"As can be expected, some residents are not always happy with our quotation,” says Jacques a bit wryly. “Sometimes they prefer hiring an outside contractor if there is some price difference. But we don’t really make a profit – we try to survive.” He recalls that in Auroville’s early days, people were happy to support Auroville services, even when they knew that the services were a bit more expensive. “But times have changed.”

“I would like to take the opportunity of this talk to respond to two often-heard criticisms,” says Tom, who is in charge of equipment maintenance. “One is the accusation that we have been involved in the destruction of the Youth Centre and the clearing of the Bliss Forest in December last year. This is not true. One of our JCBs was there on December 3rd to do some ground levelling; but we refused to let our JCBs be used for demolition work or for the felling of trees. That was done by outsiders.”

The other criticism is about the dismal quality of the Certitude Road, the most-used road in Auroville. “We can only repair a few stretches,” explains Manickam. “We cannot touch the stretch in between Dinesh teashop and the privately-owned land opposite. We have tried a few times, but these people won’t let us to do the work; there were even physical fights and they let the dog loose, and one of us needed hospital treatment. We filed a police complaint but nothing came of that and no help from any authority was offered. These people object to the dust of the road and want us to pave or tar it. But this road does not feature in the Auroville Master Plan, and part of it is peramboke, under the ultimate responsibility of the Collector of our district. Until the Town Development Council has solved this puzzle, the Road Service can’t do a thing.”

Asked about the future, Jacques throws up his hands. “We have the know-how, we have the experience, we have the machinery, we even have a large stock of paver blocks, we can do so much more. But we are vastly under-utilized. We could once again become a prime community service. But if that vision is not shared, there will be not much future for the Road Service.”