Auroville organization in decline

Auroville’s organization is in decline. Over the last years we have never missed an opportunity to damage or discredit our procedures with unwise decisions and lots of agitation. Today, we don’t have a decision-making process which is clearly defined and properly understood, let alone properly implemented, and the whole architecture of our collective organization needs to be rebuilt.

The outcome of the recent selection process for membership of the Working Committee and Auroville Council is just another misery we have inflicted on our collective body in the field of collective organization. It is a direct consequence of our present situation, an unavoidable continuation of our collective confusion which each time is reaching a new level, without much hope for any improvement.

We never assess our organization system and the procedures that build it. When we face a problem, the immediate reaction is to work out a new procedure to replace the faulty one with the naïve belief that it will automatically solve everything, a kind of magic potion. Rather than trying to identify where the process or the procedure failed and why, we rush and invent a so-called new thing, with great enthusiasm. Then we crash and discover sooner or later that we have created another problem, on another level, which is even more difficult to solve.

It has always been difficult to organize Auroville’s internal affairs, but since a few years the situation has started to seriously go astray after major working groups began to modify their policies without ratifying the modifications through the Residents’ Assembly according to the existing procedures, or refused to execute a valid and legitimate decision taken by the Residents’ Assembly. 

It was not difficult to foresee that this would trigger an opposite reaction from the residents, using the Residents’ Assembly in an attempt to bypass the working groups, claiming it to be the sole legitimate structure to make decisions although using inappropriate procedures. From reactions to reactions we have moved to the extremes and today we have reached a situation where almost all our political system has lost most of its meaning and credibility.

1. Examples are the fact that a Residents’ Assembly decision regarding the benches around the Matrimandir Banyan Tree and the gardens was ignored by the Auroville Council and the Matrimandir executives; the change in the Housing Service policy which happened without approval of the Residents’ Assembly; the proposed change of mandate of the Funds and Assets Management Committee (FAMC), which contains a provision that in future any change of its mandate will be submitted to the Residents Assembly “for a four week feedback process” instead of “for its decision”, leaving the question open who will take the final decision on the change of mandate; the Maintenance policy that is supposed to be “approved by the FAMC” rather than ratified by the Residents Assembly.

2. Examples are the unsuccessful attempt (there was no quorum) to overrule a decision of the Entry Service regarding a Newcomer; the successful vote to overrule a decision of the FAMC regarding the closing of a unit; and the attempt of the Entry Task Force to make the Residents’ Assembly the final authority on admission of people as Aurovilians.

Mixing legislative and executive functions

One of the recurrent mistakes we make is to mix the legislative authority and responsibility with those belonging to the executive. The legislative and the executive power or authority are supposed to be the two pillars of any organizational system. There is a body which envisions and decides how society will be organized, and another body which executes and implements this vision and decision. The legislative responsibility and role is naturally the role of the Residents’ Assembly. The executive responsibility and role is obviously the role of the working groups. The legislative and executive authority cannot and should never be in the same hands, whether it is the working groups or the Residents’ Assembly. For that would result in absolutism, and such a political system is the complete opposite of what a society like Auroville needs. Therefore, those respective roles and responsibilities should never overlap and their areas of action should always be properly defined and mutually respected if we don’t want to corrupt the entire system.

The legislative and the executive bodies, expressing two different but complementary levels of authority and set of responsibilities, should be articulated around a clear and sound decision-making process. Those three terms (the legislative power, the executive power and the decision-making process) should be the core of our organizational system and it is from there that the whole political architecture will be developed and will evolve. From a basic and simple principle it becomes possible to develop and manifest a complex system with a complete set of procedures in order to organize the life of a complex society.

It is those principles and their structural manifestations that constitute the institutions of our society. And we should learn to deal and behave towards our collective institutions with great respect as it is another way to respect each other. Only from there will we be able to move away from the present situation which is an endless source of deep and constant resentment and frustrations.

Constitution of working groups and competence

Another serious issue is the constitution of our committees or working groups. There is a strong belief that those bodies, and in particular the Auroville Council and the Working Committee, should be representative of the components of Auroville's society. The concept itself is unclear, as I don’t see how we can properly define those components, but nevertheless we have come up with a few terms like gender, nationality, age, and community.

This concept is contrary to the principle of human unity that is supposed to be one of the core values of Auroville. Being male or female, youth or senior, Italian or Indian, born thousands of kilometers away or in a surrounding village, has little to do with inner and universal qualities; they are only the most external part of what we are. The true fact is that we are all human beings. We are supposed to act as human beings without making specific distinctions based on external characteristics. The present attitude is going against the human unity principle by creating external and superficial categories, and even worse, by institutionalizing them.

In terms of organization, one of the main consequences of this perception, when it comes to selecting those who have to assume such specific and complex tasks, is that we always miss the point by focusing on the artificial parameters of representivity rather than on the competence of the people to be selected. The competence issue, which is central to such a process, is therefore never properly addressed. And when I speak about competence, I don’t speak about diplomas but about inner and individual qualities and capacities like honesty, integrity, kindness, intellectual development, and specific experience of the tasks at hand, to name but a few. Everyone cannot be a teacher, nor can everyone be an artist, a healer, a manager or a cook. But in Auroville, and today more than ever, everybody can sit in the most pre-eminent working groups with the responsibility of taking decisions that will affect the community as a whole, without even knowing practically how our organization is functioning, what are the main principles that sustain the general organization of the city, what are the existing policies and how to use them, etc.

Ironically, this perception is never applied elsewhere, such as in schools, services, and commercial units, where the competence of a candidate is always the first and foremost parameter when constituting a team. But for the tasks which directly affect the well being of all Auroville residents, the development of their city and their representation in the world, we do the exact opposite.

If we want to constitute credible, efficient and respected working groups we have to go beyond this narrow understanding which is also the perfect recipe to get the wrong people at the wrong place for the wrong motivations.

The recent selection process

The sole purpose and only justification of a selection process is to get the right people in the right position. In my opinion, the recent exercise did not achieve that goal; rather the opposite. This is not because we do not have the right people to do this particular work in Auroville. We do have them and we know who they are. There is even a sufficient number of those people to get the diversity we are so much attached to and to replace them when needed. But those people won’t come forward and nominate themselves, according to the modus operandi of the recent selection process. They are fully aware of the difficulties, responsibility and magnitude of the work. Moreover, they are also very cautious to make a difficult commitment in a difficult environment and they will need to work with people they can trust. In other words, those people will have to be asked and motivated to take up this work.

It is an open question to what extent the community will be affected by the outcome of the recent selection process. It is well-known that the real work of Auroville is done by the civil society and that the happenings at the Town Hall are but a small part. The Working Committee and Auroville Council have lost a lot of their moral authority over the years and are not so central anymore to the general organization of the city.

Yet, this confusion and disorganization could affect the community in many ways. It may block the way to intelligent and interesting proposals and render impossible any progress on some critical issues, and it will affect our capacity to represent Auroville, the Aurovilians, at higher levels of competence and authority. In a time where a new government of India has come into existence, with possible consequences for the Auroville Foundation, a re-think of the selection process and the whole concept of Auroville’s organization are urgently required.