Auroville Consulting

Auroville Consulting was founded in 2010. Chandresh, Toine and Raghu Kolli had been talking for some time about creating a unit that would not only generate wealth for Auroville, but also offer opportunities for young people to work professionally on projects outside Auroville that resonate with Auroville values. Today, many of the team are non-Aurovilians, often engineers, management or I.T. professionals, who have recently graduated or are taking a break from a ‘conventional’ career – but the emphasis upon youth remains.

However, the original intention was not only to work outside Auroville. One of the first initiatives of the founding group was an online project called Auroville Collaborative. This brought together everything relating to certain areas of work in Auroville – education, arts and culture, green practices etc. – so that people working in a particular area could see what other people in that area were working on and to present this work to the outside world.

However, the Auroville Collaborative unit was not designed to be income-generating: Auroville Consulting was created for this. “But when we do projects outside Auroville, it doesn’t mean that Auroville does not benefit,” clarifies Martin Scherfler, another of the co-founders. “Apart from the financial benefit to the community, the vision was always to be a platform between the inside and outside so that expertise would flow both ways. I think that is still there in most of our work.”

The projects

The work they have been engaged in so far is impressive. They have completed 24 major projects, there are 13 ongoing and they have conducted over 100 capacity-building trainings (see box). Their clients are mainly State, Central Government, academic institutions or international agencies. Most of the projects and training are in the area of renewable energy and green practices, as well as individual wellbeing – the focus of their Retreats programmes – but recently they helped Tirupathi, Bhubaneswar and Mangalore Municipal Corporations prepare Smart City Proposals.

Completed projects also include renewable energy action plans for Pondicherry and Tamil Nadu, and a detailed case study for the development of green industrial parks in India. Ongoing projects include a regional energy plan for the Hubli-Dharwad municipality and a solar village project for the neighbouring village of Irumbai.

Within Auroville at present, their projects include one in Buddha Garden which aims to automate irrigation, using solar powered smart technology; smart street lighting; and a first-in-India experiment which has involved installing a new type of high-efficiency solar panel that can produce both thermal and electrical power for the Pour Tous Distribution Centre kitchen.

“The common factor in all these projects,” explains Abhi, one of the team members, “is the optimisation of energy use.”

The programmes

They also run programmes that have successfully established themselves over the years. These include the Auroville Green Practices workshops which have been running for five years and have catered to more than 400 students; the Auroville Retreats, which focus on individual wellbeing but also include custom retreats for organisations that want to strengthen group identity; and the annual Summer Schools.

The Summer Schools focus on different aspects of sustainability. So far, the themes have included responsible energy management, organic farming and green architecture. It is a very intense three week programme – “designed to exhaust them, to break old neural patterns,” says Martin – that includes a hands-on project and an introduction to systems thinking, as well as personal transformational development.

“We want a programme that provides something of value to the students but also contributes to an Auroville project. In the past, this has included installing solar panels at the Tibetan Pavilion, building structures at the African Pavilion and urban farming in Citadines.”

Martin notes that the summer school programme has been designed with help from Monica Sharma [see Auroville Today issue 330, January 2017]. “We have used what she calls the ‘conscious spectrum’ approach which we have renamed ‘hands, heart, head’, basically the three pillars of sustainability. Every day during the programme we make sure we work with all three.”

Auroville Consulting has already acquired a considerable reputation in India. But why should their clients choose Auroville Consulting rather than another consulting firm? Is there something that makes them unique?

Martin laughs. “Sustainability, in terms of sustainable resource management and sustainable management practices, is our guiding principle but we are not the only consulting organisation in India resonating on this level. I have met many individuals in consulting firms who think exactly the way we think; they are just in a slightly different vehicle. What we can say is we work with sincerity, integrity and passion, we have always delivered and we do not take bribes. I think this is why some of the government departments keep coming back to us.”

Collaborating hubs

So how does Auroville Consulting function? How is it organised?

Auroville Consulting is the consulting wing for outside work but also the administrative umbrella for a number of sub-units. These include ‘Auroville Green Practices’, which runs workshops and the annual summer school, and ‘Auroville Retreats’, which organizes retreats for individuals and groups on the theme of wellbeing. ‘Auroville Collaborative’, another sub-unit, is primarily for Auroville-related projects.

This sounds complicated. What holds it all together?

“There are two ways to organise,” says Martin. “One is to put everything under one unit or department, the other one is to have interdependent and collaborating hubs. We tend towards the second in the way we organise things here.”

But how to ensure that the different ‘hubs’ share a common understanding?

He explains there’s a lot of permeability: an individual may work on more than one project for more than one team. There is also a lot of emphasis placed upon inter-group communication.

Every Friday, every project team member submits a few bullet points on the work they have completed that week, and this report goes out to everybody. On Thursday afternoons, one member from each team presents to everybody else what they are working on.

The work environment is also special here. There is a room called the tearoom where everybody meets informally daily at 10 o’clock and 3 o’clock and where everybody eats lunch together.

On Fridays, everybody goes down and works in the community garden, and once a week there is a session where anybody can come and talk about their interests and passion.

Every Thursday morning there is also a session for capacity building and personal transformation. In addition, there is a peer-to-peer learning programme where one team member can teach another a specific skill.

All this is much appreciated by those individuals who have worked in other organisations in India. “Here it is not hierarchy-based or role-based or task-based,” says Prabhaka. “It is person-based. The best part is that everybody is more or less equal. We eat the same food, we share ideas. This is one aspect you do not get outside and that is the beauty of this place.”

“I’m really fortunate that I’m working in Auroville Consulting,” says Ahmed, “because I have a little experience of working in a company outside and how they treat their people. Here they have created a culture of responsibility rather than accountability.” “I love the working culture in Auroville Consulting,” says Anuraag. “The way people mingle in different projects and the responsibility we are given.”

Being given responsibility is clearly significant because most of the people working here are young: they could not hope to be given such freedom if they were working in a traditional Indian company.

How does Consulting make decisions about which projects or programmes to take up?

“It’s generally very straightforward,” says Martin. “For example, Balu looks after Auroville Green Practices and if he wants to do a programme he will quickly run it by one of the core team members who will almost always say ‘yes’ at once. That’s all that’s needed for him to go ahead. If a more critical discussion is necessary and a decision to be made, then it comes to the full core team. And if this team feels it needs advice from the mentors, we bring it to them.”

“The core team,” explains Vimal, another founding member of Auroville Consulting, “are people who have been here a long time. Then we have team members who are long-term and receive a stipend, and volunteers who are on probation for the first three months. The mentors are people like Mr. Bala Baskar, Toine, Chandresh and Raghu Kolli who have vast experience of the Indian corporate and governmental set-up.”

Challenges

What is it like to work with outside agencies? Do they share the same concept of sustainability?

Not always, it seems. Vimal remembers Consulting being asked by a German organisation based in Delhi to prepare an exhibition of all the projects they had done with the Indian government. “From beginning to end, they couldn’t resonate with what we were doing. But we finished the project successfully.” And learning from this experience? “Not to work with them again!”

“My experience is that many high-level IAS government officers resonate with what we are talking about,” says Martin. “It’s dealing with the other levels which is difficult because in a highly hierarchical structure, the other levels are unwilling to take decisions. So if the person at the top is not behind your project, it becomes impossible.”

Recently, they were fortunate that the Bhubaneswar Commissioner really cared about the citizen participation aspect of Smart Cities. “He supported us when we said we wanted to start with hearing from the marginalized - the children, slum dwellers, disabled people, transgenders etc. We mobilised a hundred thousand people in the slums to find out what their priorities for development were,” says Martin. “That was very satisfying. For me, that is sustainability.”

On the other hand, it was a shock to encounter the work culture of the municipal corporation. “We were based there some of the time and we would see the employees coming in only at 10.30. By 4 pm they were disappearing again, while we were sometimes working until midnight. We wondered what we were doing wrong!”

Martin also mentions that many potential government projects don’t materialise or take years to come to fruition. “One thing I have learned from Toine is persistence, not to give up. For example, the solar village project in Irumbai was announced five years ago but it is still far from completion, although we have completed an energy efficiency survey and the installation of energy efficient fans. One problem is that the people at the top of the commissioning agency change regularly. So far, this project has had four different managers, and each time you have to explain everything again to the new man.”

So if it is so difficult working with the government, why do they do it?

“The main reason is that if we can get one project accepted in that system it will have much more impact.”

The accommodation challenge

Balu, who coordinates Auroville Green Practices, often has to deal with government officials with particular expectations and needs. “We had booked a government official into Atihi Griha guest house, which is simple but comfortable, and the first thing he wanted was A/C and a television. These people want an urban standard when they come to Auroville which we often can’t provide, and they want immediate entry to Matrimandir.

“Once I had to tell the owner of the liquor shop in a local village not to serve participants in a workshop because we knew if he did, we wouldn’t see them the next day!”

Providing accommodation for visiting participants is a huge challenge. They often have 40 students or more coming for a course, but there is no one place in Auroville that can accommodate so many. Instead, they have to put them up in cheap accommodation in the area around Auroville and bus them backwards and forwards.

“This is one of the main factors behind one of our biggest projects at present, the Centre for Sustainability project,” says Martin. This project, planned to be located at the Pony Farm, would provide accommodation for 60 students, as well as work and venue spaces and perhaps a cafeteria in the first phase.

“Some time ago, we got a project to document the best practices of climate responsive architecture in tropical countries,” explains Martin. “The Centre for Sustainability project will apply and be a shop window for these practices.” A design studio has already taken place with architects from both Auroville and abroad.

In the end, what gives them the most satisfaction?

For Balu, it is seeing students who have attended architects’ workshops getting inspired by Auroville and coming back later on their own. Vimal identifies a very personal project, the ‘Creative Expressions’ book, an artistic presentation of the products of some of the Auroville units which he conceptualised and photographed.

For Martin it is those projects in which he has been most invested. “The Summer School is one of these because it is more than just a professional investment: you also work very intensely with the students at a personal level.”

The next five years

Recently, the team considered what they would like Consulting to achieve in the next five years. Vimal would like the Centre for Sustainability to be completed and to have more people on the core team.

Martin agrees that he would like Consulting to grow, both in terms of revenue and team members. The solar village concept is also very close to his heart. “In five years, I would love to have a hundred solar villages on the ground. Hopefully, these would provide 24/7 energy to the villagers because this could really impact the quality of life. But there are also other elements of this concept I find fascinating, like the potential for co-ownership of the facilities and revenue-sharing by the villagers.

“I don’t know if it will ever happen, but we are actively looking for funds.”