The bill for the hill

Michael pointed out that a way of avoiding power cuts in Auroville would be to duplicate this pumped storage system by building a 30 metre high hill in the greenbelt, about 1 km from Matrimandir, and creating a lake on top with a capacity of 150,000 cubic metres of water. This lake would be connected to the Matrimandir lake which would supply the water for it, and whenever there is a power cut, the water would be fed back downhill through a turbine to provide back-up power to the community.

He reported that calculations showed that the energy storage of such a system would be about 10MWh, or about 25 hours of continuous back-up given the size of the community at that time. However, with a population of 50,000 it would only provide about one hour of back-up, which would mean that more such systems would need to be constructed, possibly using the Matrimandir lake as the higher one to link with newly constructed lakes lower down in the greenbelt.

The hill is projected to be 13 acres at its base, 30 metres tall, with a 200 x 400 metre plateau at the top, and would contain 1 million cubic metres of soil. Michael proposed that the earth from the excavation of the Matrimandir lake would be used to build the hill. “People have expressed concern,” he said, “that transporting such a large amount of excavated earth by truck through Auroville would create a lot of dust and aggravation. It is also a very costly option. We plan instead to use conveyor belts to transport the earth from the point of excavation to the site of the hill…If they are situated within the green corridors, there will not be any problem for the Auroville residents.” In 2012, Michael hoped that they could begin excavating the lake and building the hill within three years. In actual fact, the excavation of the lake began much later and is still far from complete, and while the excavated earth is being heaped up on huge hills near the Matrimandir, the construction of the hill has not yet begun. However, a site for the hill in the greenbelt has been identified and a road to it is under construction.

Other changes have also taken place. Recently it was decided that the conveyor belt option was not feasible, so now it seems that something like 1 million cubic metres of excavated soil will need to be transported from the Matrimandir to the site of the hill in the greenbelt through Auroville by many thousands of trucks. Also, the Varuna website now cites three options for how the lake on top of the hill could be linked with the Matrimandir lake, and/or with newly constructed lakes elsewhere.

In 2012, concerns about this mega project were muted, perhaps because it held out the prospect of a back-up power supply to a community which had just experienced widespread disruption to its electricity supply due to Cyclone Thane. Also, it was difficult then to imagine the practical impact such a project would have upon the environment and upon our daily lives. Today, however, the mountains of soil surrounding the Matrimandir, the prospect of thousands of trucks transporting it through Auroville, and the fact that yet more trees are being felled in the greenbelt to make a new road to the site of the hill, has led some people to seriously question the wisdom of this project.

One such person is Major Arun Ambathy who, after distinguished service in the Indian Army, became an Auroville greenworker in Revelation forest.

Auroville Today: What are your concerns about the hill project and associated developments?

Arun: There are many issues. There are social, legal, administrative, ecological, planning and moral aspects, all of which are deeply disturbing. On the social level, this project has run roughshod over the community process. It has never received any larger community approval and it is not mentioned in the 2001 Master Plan, which the current town developers consider as their bible. It has merely received permission from the Foundation Office Town Development Committee, whose legitimacy is still being questioned in the Supreme Court, to construct the hill and make an access road. This sanction makes no mention of tree cutting.

There is no monitoring of the quantity of timber extracted, which includes valuable trees, on the road to the site and on the site of the hill, and we do not know where the timber has gone. The Auroville Foundation is responsible for timber movement, and Michael claims that he received verbal sanction from the Officer on Special Duty for Farms and Forests to cut and remove trees, but nobody has seen anything written from her. Neither the Auroville Forest Group nor the Green Service of the Auroville Foundation was consulted. All this amounts to an administrative bypass.

Moreover, the cutting was not properly supervised. The access road is 24 metres wide in places, wide enough to allow three trucks to pass side by side, while the minimum width is 15 metres. In fact, this access road alone takes up 3 acres of what before was dense forest land.

When the trees were cut, a delegation of RA appointed groups met with Michael and the Matrimandir lake team which is responsible for developing the hill. We wanted to know what was happening and why the road was so wide. However, Michael and the lake team seemed not willing to accept any form of accountability. We were told that this project would have no impact, and that we were paranoid and obstructionist. But it is estimated that 1 million m³ of soil will be excavated for the lake, and to get this to the site of the hill will require more than 100,000 huge trucks transporting it through Auroville, possibly by day and night. So how can they claim that this project will have no impact?

Then there is the social impact upon the villagers. No mapping has been done of how this hill will affect the surrounding landowners, for 50% of the land around the hill is in private hands. How will its shade affect their crops? How will the cutting of trees, the diversion of the natural water flow and the geological compaction of this new hill affect the underground aquifers? As far as I know, no study has been done to ascertain this.

This touches on the moral issue. What kind of ethical justification does Michael’s team have? By creating a dammed lake at Matrimandir and constructing this hill, they are diverting water which would otherwise have flowed partially to the villages and on to village land. Who are they to decide who uses it and how much they can use?

Another important effect of the hill and Matrimandir lake projects may be its effect on seawater intrusion into the borewells. At present, this is kept at bay because of the infiltration pressure of rainwater from the land. But if you are cutting trees and storing the runoff from the water inside the Crown in the impermeable Matrimandir lake, as is planned, the infiltration which is keeping the seawater at bay is going to get drastically reduced. The rainfall inside this 400 acres is 2 billion litres a year, which will be denied to the villagers and denied to the groundwater.

Moreover, Auroville is about experimentation, but these large-scale interventions in the environment, which are difficult to reverse, rule out much space for further experimentation in the future. Is this fair? Michael and his team want to experiment, and Auroville is for experiments. It is like an insulated ‘sandbox’ where we can experiment with different financial systems, governance, architecture etc. This is OK if these experiments are small-scale. But Michael and his team are experimenting on a scale which massively impacts not only the environment but also people’s lives.

But some people argue that Auroville has had over 50 years to experiment and now is the time to build the city.

The rush of the planners in the Town Hall to complete the city in their lifetime is limiting the ability of future generations of Aurovilians to make their own experiments, while creating huge disharmony in the organisation and governance of Auroville. Is this really the way we want the city to be built?

Then there is the legal aspect. Nowhere in India can you do a project of this scale without any form of Environmental Impact Assessment. The people who are representing town development in the Town Hall seem to believe they can do anything now that there is a stay on the National Green Tribunal order which, among other things, designated the need for an Environmental Impact Assessment on new developments. However, the Supreme Court is still hearing the matter of whether Auroville’s planning and development activities should come under the purview of Environmental Impact Assessment or not. They have never stated that Auroville does not need such an assessment.

Moreover, through extensive tree cutting and large-scale lake excavations that are somewhat irreversible in nature, the lake and hill team as well as the Town Hall planners are imposing a fait accompli upon the courts of India, not allowing them to adjudicate the matter in a fair manner.

In fact, the ecological impact of this project is potentially the most devastating. To fully develop this hill project, a minimum of 16 acres of land with dense tree cover will likely be bulldozed. Out of these 16 acres, 9 acres have already been cleared. An additional 7 acres will be cleared for the base of the hill as it takes shape. This project will considerably and adversely affect the environment and hydrology of the northern slopes of the Auroville plateau. They have chosen a site for the hill which had dense tree cover with an average canopy height of 12 metres and all this has been cut. Hydrologically this is a very sensitive site. It is on top of a ridge which allows high percolation of rainwater, and it is always better to infiltrate water at the top of the ridge so that it gets distributed equitably, both to Auroville and the surrounding bioregion.

This will not happen here. As Rishi Walker, who has created a sanctuary in this area points out, a hill 30 metres high would result in zero precipitation percolating into the aquifer. The quality and diversity of the vegetation on the steep slopes would be considerably decreased while the overall evaporative surfaces of the land hugely increased. The effects on the surrounding land not belonging to Auroville would also be significant. And Rishi concludes, “Environmentally, this project would be highly destructive and annihilate decades of hard work as well as the manifestation of the land’s true potential...There could hardly be a less appropriate place for such an undertaking.”

Furthermore, this new road and hill have serious implications for Auroville’s consolidation. Half the area around the hill is owned by private parties. The hill, in providing a wonderful viewpoint of both the Matrimandir and the sea, will encourage real estate speculation and the growth of tourist facilities around it. Until recently, this was the only area of the greenbelt where further land consolidation was feasible. As it has no access, land prices are lower than elsewhere. However, the tourist attraction of the hill and the provision of a new road will change all this, for land prices will skyrocket (an Aurovilian who recently sold his land nearby may already be benefitting from this) defeating Auroville’s long-term plan to consolidate land in this area. Moreover, it’s a given that the new road will encourage those who have private land along it to develop commercial activities, and this development will irremediably change the character and physicality of this part of the greenbelt.

But we know that the whole greenbelt is already fragmented because of village and other commercial developments.

But we should still try to consolidate it; we shouldn’t discard it so easily. Furthermore, there is a real risk that if the new hill road is connected to the projected outer ring road, this will create a bypass from the ECR to the new National Highway leading to Nagapattinam and the south, a bypass running right through the northern part of Auroville. So this road development for the hill has the possibility of becoming the highway which Auroville fought so hard to prevent some years ago.

Again, I’m unaware if anybody has checked Michael’s estimate of the back-up power that will be generated for Auroville by this project. But even going by his figures, if it will only provide an extra hour of back-up power when the city reaches 50,000, does this really justify all the damage, disruption and energy expenditure it will involve? All this calls for a serious feasibility study.

Michael usually has his figures checked with experts in Germany and elsewhere.

But what do they know of local conditions? Besides, there is a possible conflict of interest which may influence his interpretation of such research, if it has ever been done. Around the hill there are seven fragments of Michael Bonke’s land which will also become prime real estate with the construction of a hill with fine views of Matrimandir and the sea. He has taken care that the road to the hill does not pass through any of his land, even though this would be the most direct route. So what are his plans for this land? Will he develop it and the hill commercially? In 2012 he remarked that the hill would be “a nice place for Aurovilians to go swimming and relax,” but he hasn’t said that he won’t develop this for outside tourism. For the hill, too, will become prime real estate.

Then again, the soil for the hill is Auroville soil, excavated from the Matrimandir. But the hill itself is not on Auroville land. It is registered to Aditi Diamonds, which is owned by Michael himself. Is this a fair use of Auroville’s resources?

I think Michael has said that everything he is doing is for the development of Auroville, not for personal gain. For example, that Varuna, his company, is providing free electricity to Aurovilians while bearing the cost of constructing the Matrimandir lake. And that in all this he is doing what Mother wanted.

I believe he is interpreting what Mother wants according to his own bias for technocratic solutions. Regarding the hill, Gilles Guigan says the only reference Mother made to it was in a conversation with Huta on 25th June, 1965 – “When the lake will be dug, all the soil will be collected on one side in order to make it look like a small mountain where there will be fir trees. You see, in future there will be snow!” – and on the map she drew at that time it is located to the north west of the Matrimandir, and quite close by. Certainly not far away in the Greenbelt, which Michael claims she intended for the location.

Furthermore, Gilles points out that almost everything in this conversation with Mother was subsequently superseded – including her initial design for the ‘Mother’s Pavilion’ and the provision of Japanese-style gardens – so why is Michael so keen on keeping the hill?

It is probably because it fits with his approach to development, which reflects the development paradigm of the 1960s in favouring big projects. It’s a top-down technocratic vision which, in its energy-intensive and extensive manipulation of matter and of the environment, represents all that is wrong with the old world development paradigm. It certainly doesn’t harmonise with Auroville’s ideals.

In fact, I believe that Michael has his own master plan, which is different from the Auroville Master Plan. It’s a plan which includes not only this hill and road, but also a solar power plant and, possibly, a diamond factory on Auroville land. It’s a plan which supports the deepening of the lake to provide a reservoir for his desalinated water and to provide the soil to build his hill: they all tie into each other. And it’s not clear that all these align with Auroville’s interests or that he doesn’t benefit in some way from them. I don’t think that Mother’s vision is a driver of what he is doing. It is merely a way of legitimising his large-scale plans.

Is there an alternative use for the huge amount of soil which has already been excavated for the Auroville lake?

Cristo says that Harald Kraft, who advises Michael on the Matrimandir lake, pointed out that the excavated soil can be used for roads and, in the form of compressed earth blocks or poured earth concrete for buildings. For this kind of construction is more environmentally friendly than cement and steel. In fact, it is estimated that if some of the soil is used for roads (where the soil can be stabilised using chemicals or cement and lime), the rest of the earth from the lake could be used to build about half of Auroville.

Doesn’t this make much more sense than using it to build a hill which has so many question marks over its utility and potentially is so destructive in its social and environmental consequences?