A challenging and controversial task

In 2022 the Foundation appointed him a member of the Funds and Assets Management Committee (FAMC). The Funds and Assets Management Committee is responsible for developing Auroville’s financial and economic policies in alignment with its vision and ideals. It is convened by the Secretary of the Auroville Foundation.

This is the first time that a member of this FAMC has given a fuller explanation of their objectives and the challenges they are facing, as well as providing responses to some of the concerns that their actions have raised. 

The past

Auroville Today: I’ve always found it difficult to categorise you. You are trained as a mathematician and an economist, but you are also a craftsman – working with wood – and you have an interest in philosophy…

Torkil: When I was a young student in Denmark and had to decide what to study, we were presented with four pages of all the subjects available, and asked to indicate which ones we wanted to follow. It was very difficult for me because I could have ticked 200 different things. Actually, my first interest was in archaeology, maths was my other big subject, although philosophy also attracted me. But most people studying these subjects end up in teaching, and I don’t see myself as a teacher.

So I have done many things, like the restoration of buildings. However, as I had studied the economy of the developing countries, my focus became development projects in many of these places, including India. At one time I was chairman of an organisation that was supporting schools and orphanages all over the world. We needed to do a new project in Africa and I went to one of the richest guys in Denmark to get a substantial donation. I got the donation, but he also got me! I agreed to work with him and his wife in managing a corporate responsibility fund for Bestseller, the Danish clothing company.

One of our projects was restoration work in Tranquebar after the tsunami, and this is where I first came into contact with Aurovilians. [For the Tranquebar story see AV Today 269, December 2011, eds.]

One of the common threads in your career seems to be an interest in social responsibility.

Yes, I wasn’t so interested in the money side as in the social side of development as I saw this was the most needed thing to get most countries on the right track.

This aspect of social responsibility was also evident in your plan to make both a high-end line and an affordable low-end line of furniture in Prakrit, your woodworking unit in Auroville.

In principle I also wanted to make affordable furniture but in reality it’s very difficult. If you want to make good quality but affordable furniture the only way to do it is to mass-produce it, and for that you need a big market. It’s a problem that is not only Prakrit’s but also Auroville’s other income generating units. They were told they should make affordable products for Auroville but most of them only make more expensive, high-end products because there’s no economic survival in the lower lines and the market in Auroville is not very big. Upasana suggested making cheap clothes for Aurovilians, but then people wanted many different designs, different colours, while affordable clothing means a restricted range of products. But Aurovilians wanted both cheapness and a wide choice.

I think we have become extremely individualised, and this is one of our big problems because the larger community suffers as a result as many solutions, like providing everybody’s basic needs through a ‘prosperity’ system, are only possible through simple collective solutions.

The FAMC’s task

What do you see as the main task of this FAMC?

The focus of the present FAMC is that everybody who works for the community should be taken care of, including their housing and basic needs. We have still a long way to go here. For “Prosperity” for all costs a lot of money, which means that the income of the community would need to be three times bigger than it is now.

However, the last two years of our work in the FAMC has mainly been an exercise in cleaning up, and I’m still quite surprised by how much mess we have managed to accumulate. In all types of units, we encountered everything from direct fraud to people starting units outside but keeping dummy units in Auroville in order not to contribute to the community but to maximise their personal income. One thing I found surprising, especially in a community like this is, how do you defend these actions to yourself? What kind of story do you build for yourself that what you are doing is actually okay? Coming from a Danish socialist thinking background, this has really shocked me.

How widespread is this?

There are quite a number of hardcore offenders, but there is an even larger grey area where things are not being done in the way they should be done.

And it’s not just the units. Housing needed a big clean-up because there have been many strange things happening over the years. Then again, some of the service units have ignored all the GST rules [the Goods and Services Tax was launched by the Government of India in July 2017, eds.], thinking it was not applicable to them, so now the GST system wants crores of money. We don’t know how to handle that. Basically we could go bankrupt if they keep on pushing.

And when we started looking at SAIIER’s budget, we saw we had something like 220 teachers on maintenance allowances for 490 students. For many years, much of the money for the teachers came from the Ministry of Education so we were very easy about putting people on teachers’ maintenances, but over a couple of years that stopped and our Budget Coordination Committee (BCC) had to cover all these maintenances. What was even worse was that the BCC had no proper accounting system, just a number of Excel sheets. From an auditing point of view it was a nightmare.

Regarding the economic health of the community, if you see the income over the last 15 years and you correct for inflation, we actually have less money per capita in Auroville today than we had 15 years ago. On the surface Auroville looks prosperous, but that’s the result of people’s personal money: it doesn’t mean that this all flows into the community to support community needs.

Most of the things we are dealing with now have been known for years, but former FAMCs, for various reasons, have not been not been able to deal with them, so everything was put under the carpet. But the carpet became sky-high!

One of the reasons former FAMCs could not handle these issues was that they had no real power. Today, you have that authority.

Yes, but I’m not a person who likes to use a big stick. Actually, the only (worldly) authority we have is through the Foundation, and if that disappears we are back to zero. But even today, when we tell people that they have to change because what they’re doing is not allowed, often they try to ignore us because this is what Aurovilians have been doing for many years.

So the clean-up you are involved in consists largely of a lot of belt-tightening to make Auroville more economically viable, while making sure that units and activities are compliant with Indian regulations?

No. It is partly redirecting expenses from the areas where it is not very needed, as well as streamlining the accounting of units, thereby creating more contribution for City Services.

Do you see light at the end of the tunnel in terms of this cleaning process or is there still much to be done?

A lot of the work has been done but there is still a long way to go. We have done a lot of cleaning up regarding things like GST compliance. But the big change will be in how the economy and the community function in the future. Will people start working with a different attitude? Because the community can only exist if people work to build the community. At present, a lot of people seem to prioritise their own economy above Auroville’s; they feel that if they pay their community contribution they are free to do whatever they like. But if they don’t focus on working for the community, where will the growth and funds for the community come from?

The cost

No doubt, the FAMC has to deal with financial shortfalls as well as abuses. The question is if it is being done in the best possible way. Your work has resulted in much pain and social disruption, and the impact has not only been financial but also social, and this has extended far beyond Auroville. For example, the decision to cut the foresters’ maintenances resulted in many forest employees from the villages being laid off. Many of these workers had worked all their lives in Auroville and they are too old to find other jobs, even though their families rely upon their income. From a strictly economic point of view there may be too many maintenances for the amount of forest, but isn’t the financial and social cost of cuts like these disproportionate?

After talking to the government forest department people the conclusion was we need perhaps 12 – 18 people to steward our forests, whereas more than 100 maintenances and staff salaries were being paid. This was because historically the focus was on planting the forest. But that was many years ago and, like so many other things in Auroville, this situation just ‘froze’ and was never adapted to the present need. There were a number of attempts to get a meeting with the Forest Group to discuss this, but they refused, saying they did not want to discuss any change. A conflict like this has no good ending. The administration was left with only two options: to surrender or cut the funding, so we cut the money. I don’t think it should have ended like this. It ended up as a stupid situation, a black and white story, which nobody wanted. 

But there’s a feeling at present that for the FAMC money has become the ‘Sovereign Lord’, and that financial health and efficiency is being prioritised over people’s welfare. For example, making the Auroville contribution compulsory even for those with limited means, or making people pay for Auroville services, or deciding to pause the ‘Silver Fund’ which supports older Aurovilians who have been here for many years, all feels like the destruction of an unwritten contract that says that when you offer your work to Auroville and its development, Auroville in return would take care of your basic needs.

But how many people are really working for Auroville? And people are still getting help from the Silver Fund, although in future we want to ensure that it is only those who are in financial need.

But is the FAMC’s approach one which balances economic needs with people’s needs?

The Greeks’ philosophy was that you should always seek the middle way. Everything has been totally out of balance in Auroville, so when you try to correct it you often have to go to the other side. Maybe we haven’t succeeded in creating a balance. But the middle-of-the-road seems to be a very difficult place to find. Also, the FAMC has very limited possibilities of navigating its way at present as countless court cases filed by Aurovilians have created roadblocks in an already complex roadmap.

Lack of information breeds rumours, distrust, and the FAMC has not been good at communicating what they are doing, and why. Most of the communications people receive from the FAMC have come as diktats or bald statements that their maintenances will cease. There has been no appreciation of the work that people have been doing, sometimes for many years in difficult circumstances. It all seems cold, lacking in basic humanity.

I agree, although I think our communication now is much better than it was before. But it is not easy to find the right words when you have to tell people who have been used to one way of living for many years that it is not working and they have to change. However, when people have lost maintenances for work that is no longer needed, they have always been called to a meeting and an attempt made to find other relevant work for them.

The FAMC could have also explained to the community what the larger problem is and what has to change, because not everybody is aware of the depth or extent of the problems that the FAMC is confronting. There would still have been disruption, pain, but at least more people would have understood the need.

It’s a fair comment. But it has not been easy because there is a push from many sides which made it more difficult for us to communicate with the community.

Is this pressure coming from above, from the Foundation Office or the Governing Board?

No, from other Aurovilians. Some have pushed us to be much more open about the abuses. We have decided not to, as it could have involved serious legal consequences for the people involved. But I’m not sure that it wouldn’t have been best to publish details about all the worst cases, especially because some of the people involved keep on pretending they’re not doing anything wrong. For if we made it public, they would have to handle their own mess.

Contradictions?

I also wonder to what extent the present actions of the FAMC may actually contradict their own objectives. For example, you wish to stimulate economic growth in Auroville, but how many new people will be drawn to Auroville or be tempted to start new enterprises in the present disrupted circumstances?

We are hopeful. Of course, the economy will not flourish if there is no trust, and there is a trust-deficit at present. But there’s still a lot of clearing to do to simplify our present structure because for some reason we created this extreme complexity of 700 units and activities. And before we can trust the accounts, the management and contributions of all these units, it does not make sense to start growing the economy larger. If you start by growing an existing mess, you will end up with a much bigger mess.

Regarding bringing new people to Auroville, I think we need to overhaul our entry process. If you’re looking at a normal organisation, you’re looking for people who you need to fulfil a particular task. That has never been done here, and I don’t think it should be the only criterion. But we have to find a middle way: to look for people who have both the values and the skill sets, because if you don’t value the latter you may not be able to run the community.

To grow a community you need not only dreamers, but also practical people with skills on many levels.

Of course, there is disruption at the moment. Whenever an organisation grows bigger and more complex, changes have to be made, and this creates a lot of disturbance. However, Auroville as an organisation has been very static for many years, with a management structure which had difficulty in implementing needed changes, even though accumulated wrongdoings or unnecessary things were strangling the functioning and growth of the community. This dysfunctionality has been known about for many years. The previous Governing Board initiated a community Retreat, where all these problems and the ‘elephants in the room’ were identified and solutions found, but afterwards everybody went back to their old ways! The present Governing Board is addressing the same issues, but with a determination that they have to be solved.

The big challenge in Auroville at the moment is how to change the present culture where there are a lot of individualistic projects and less emphasis on growing and working for the collective. Also, most of the work which should actually be done by Aurovilians is done by hired workers. 

The old Greek word for crisis meant ‘catastrophe’ but also ‘new opportunities’. In development projects around the world whenever there is a crisis, like an earthquake, there is actually a window of opportunity of a few weeks when cultural changes can happen very fast. So I would say that it’s a bit sad if Auroville does not use the present crisis as a way of growing, of changing the way we have been doing things.

But the FAMC is attempting to do this through centralisation, and through creating more bureaucracy. As quick decisions often have to be made by business units, won’t this make it difficult for them?

But the units will still have their full freedom to make business decisions, as long as they adhere to the Code of Conduct for units. The FAMC’s role is to provide the structure and oversee the activities.

Centralisation also tends to create uniformity, which militates against creativity.

True, but for a community with less than 2000 adults to have so many so-called business units is nonsense: the idea that everybody should have their own activity doesn’t make sense. For one thing, it creates a huge accounting system, and as the quality of the accounting has been very poor the consolidation of all these accounts has been very problematic. The correction was very much needed, but it is always painful for everybody when this pressure comes, because everybody has to correct something. In Auroville I think we have been quite disrespectful of the rules for very long, but now there’s no way around compliance.

I’m not a big fan of bureaucracy, but there is something called good bureaucracy. And you can’t run a complex entity like the present Auroville when there is no system.

The question of freedom

But, still, is the kind of economic efficiency model the FAMC is applying today appropriate for an experiment like Auroville which requires a certain amount of freedom and, like any experiment, may tend to be ‘messy’ at times?

I don’t believe the economy should be the only thing that should govern Auroville, and in the sense Auroville is an experiment we should allow a lot of things to happen. But even in a spiritual community you have to be very respectful of the resources you use; in fact you should be even more respectful. And I think some Aurovilians have had a huge disrespect for anything like efficiency or money.

We all appreciate freedom, but I was brought up in a socialist Denmark and learned that my personal freedom is linked to everybody else’s personal freedom, and that I had to limit my personal freedom for the greater good of the larger community. I think a lot of people in Auroville want a more extreme freedom than most spiritual communities would give. If it was an ashram, our freedom would be very limited. I understand that Auroville is different, but we have gone very far to the other side of the road.

Also, economically the only freedom we can have in Auroville is if we can manage to generate our own income. If you’re financially supported, there is a danger that somebody will take the decisions for you. The sentence, ‘Auroville does not belong to anybody in particular’ is something we should constantly aspire to: for if Auroville kept its house in order, nobody would intervene.

You paint a rather bleak picture of Aurovilians gaming the system for their own advantage. But are so many people taking advantage? Also, while one shouldn’t excuse wrongdoing, doesn’t the system itself make life difficult for many people? For example, people coming to Auroville are often asked to donate a lot of non-refundable money to get accommodation, maintenances hardly suffice to support a family, the structure of the Foundation is not business-friendly, and nationals from other countries are under the constant threat of having their visa withdrawn if the government so decides.

In these circumstances, where many people already feel vulnerable and hard-pressed to survive, the actions of the present FAMC are seen to be coercive and lacking in understanding of the serious difficulties they are creating. While acknowledging that the FAMC has a difficult task, do you feel that the FAMC has made mistakes? Could you have done certain things better, and if so, how?

Sure we have all made mistakes, and a number of things could have been done better. But the environment the FAMC has had to navigate in the last two years has been very complex, with more than 30 court cases constantly putting roadblocks up, and many using the common strategy for avoiding accountability and change – delay, deny and deflect – a strategy that it sometimes seems Auroville has perfected to the core. Solutions found in collaboration will always be better and mutually acceptable. But it takes two to tango – only one dancing becomes a bit awkward. However, things are improving now, as most people now accept that the changes are needed and are here to stay. 

Regarding the issue of ‘vulnerability’, Auroville could not take place anywhere else in the world, and we should be daily grateful that India has held this project for so many years and with a large degree of freedom. With few formalities, everybody can start activities, even foreigners without a work permit can engage in economic activities, as long as the purpose is to benefit the community. However, if you want to earn money for your own purpose, for sure you have come to the wrong place.

The next step

What happens after the FAMC has completed its ‘cleaning’ work. Do you have ideas about what the next step in Auroville’s development could look like?

I have worked a lot in development, and learned there has never been a beautiful well-planned development anywhere in the world. Development is by nature messy. Even in countries where I’ve seen good development, when you talk to the people who were part of the process they say they did not know what would happen; they were just plain lucky that it turned out well. Of course, if you don’t do the best that you can, you will also fail. So this idea that you can take somebody from point A to point B in an orderly manner in a society which is highly complex like Auroville’s is probably an illusion.

We in the FAMC are painfully aware that the effect of our long ‘cleaning’ work has a negative impact on the growth potential of Auroville.

To a large degree, Auroville’s economy depends upon us selling things outside, and I don’t think we can change this. 80% of what we basically consume has to be ‘imported’. As we have no way of making it, we have to ‘export’ to pay for this. But we can help the commercial units to grow.

Some years ago, a group of us created an integral entrepreneurial lab to help them do this. The dream was to create a centre where all the requisite knowledge, from marketing to finance, is available for everybody, and everybody could avail that knowledge at any stage of their growth. The main aim was to grow a few units much bigger. However, we learned that the unit executives were very reluctant to grow the unit larger than they could personally manage, to avoid the next step of delegating responsibility and so losing full control.

And nobody was allowed to question this decision to stay small. The funny thing about Auroville is that while there is no ownership of a unit, in some ways ownership is stronger here than outside because outside you are accountable to others, like a board and shareholders. Anyway, this is one reason why Auroville consists of many small units which are unable to generate much income for the community.

But there are around 50 units which have some capacity and potential to grow. We call them ‘beautiful bonsai units’ because they want to remain small. However, the FAMC has started focusing upon their growth potential by discussing with them what is needed for their growth. 

The income for City Services is actually only coming at present from a handful of units. So maybe we should focus on helping these units who have a much bigger turnover to grow into very big companies, for we will need five or ten of these to get the needed income for ‘Prosperity’. However, it might be good to disconnect these units in some way from the existing Auroville economy because their needs will be so different, and let them be run by professional management. I think that’s the only solution.

Meanwhile, we are experimenting with the beginnings of a ‘Prosperity’ system. We are trying to put PTDC, PTPS and HERS together under one umbrella. The plan is for a basic basket of goods to be available in all these outlets, (PTPS and HERS can still be commercial to some extent to cater to guests and volunteers) and these will be purchased from wholesalers through a central procurement system. Together with a plan to link all the major buyers, outlets, restaurants, bakeries etc. with a data system keeping track of buying needs, combined with a professional service to procure the best products at the best cost, we would be able to get our basic needs covered in the most economical way: for providing the basic needs of all could be the first part of Prosperity.

But all this can only happen on a centralised basis.

This has been talked about before, but it never materialised.

Yes, things like a common procurement service have always failed because some of the key people didn’t want it. So, once again, we are faced with the same question: are people willing to give up some of their freedom for a collective discipline which would benefit the community as a whole?

The personal dimension

What about the impact upon you personally of being involved in this FAMC work? Given the task you set out to achieve and the criticisms it has attracted, it cannot have been easy.

It hasn’t been easy at all. The way we communicate with each other is often very violent and uncomfortable. I’m a person who doesn’t like confrontation and I don’t like being rude to people. But if people have broken the values of Auroville, I can be quite tough. I wrote an article just before this FAMC started when I said the alternative at that time to Auroville clearing up its own mess was for it to be put into administration, meaning that an outside administrator would take over to ensure that all of Auroville was fully compliant with laws and regulations and all its liabilities were settled. I only went into the FAMC to avoid this possibility, for if we don’t do something now, the remedial action may become even more blunt.  

But I wonder to what extent you have felt personally conflicted. Your interest in Buddhism, for example, or your experience as a woodworker who prizes organic design, suggest that you don’t necessarily favour top-down imposition. Also, your comment in an earlier interview that “The logical mind creates a simplified version of the world, which helps us to survive and navigate, but it becomes a hindrance when we want to grasp the larger picture”, suggests that you also see limitations to rational action.

I agree that it is something of a paradox to ask somebody like me to put something in order, because my feeling is that nature as such is not rational. Basically, human consciousness is just a huge machine to find patterns in everything, but nature is not formed by patterns. This is simply something that we impose upon it: this is our ‘reality’. Modern physics confirms that at a certain level the structure of the universe is chaotic, and you cannot predict anything. And this is probably what creates freedom and evolution, because if the universe was totally predictable, everything would be a machine.

But there’s another side to it. While I don’t believe in an Almighty God as such, that doesn’t mean that I don’t believe in something divine, because there seems to be a trend in the evolution of the universe to create beautiful complexity. According to the laws of physics, this universe should actually have been a mess, to have progressed to higher and higher states of chaos, of entropy. But ‘something’ has chosen to counter this, to create beautiful complexity out of chaos. And human evolution is an important part of this.