Auroville in crisis: The way forward

As with many other attempts to engage the Governing Board over the past three and a half years, the Board gave no meaningful response and took no action.

Members of the International Advisory Council also have repeatedly made similar requests and recommendations to the Governing Board to no avail. Madras High Court orders and judgments also have called for the restoration of mutuality at the core of the Act. Its directives have been ignored as well.

Such a posture by the Governing Board makes constructive resolution of the crisis impossible.

Crisis resolution efforts require certain conditions to be successful, including the creation of an atmosphere of trust, confidence, safety, and openness where collaborative problem-solving can occur. Four specific steps need to be taken to create these conditions for Auroville.

1. There must be an agreement among all parties to restore, honour, and revitalise the principles and terms of the Auroville Foundation Act.

2. All coercive and confrontational measures directed at Auroville residents and the community must cease.

3. Auroville’s core values must be sincerely reaffirmed and rejuvenated by all parties, including the governance principles of fidelity, respect, and mutuality among the three statutory bodies as upheld by all other government-appointed administrations.

4. The Residents’ Assembly and Inter-national Advisory Council need a trustworthy and sincere negotiating partner in a Governing Board. 

A plan to create such conditions is needed with the support of India’s Ministry of Education and other relevant stakeholders.

A successfully negotiated resolution of the crisis will result in three key outcomes that will set Auroville on a positive path to the future:

1. Restoration of operational balance among the three statutory bodies of the Auroville Foundation; and the re-establishment of Auroville’s core values and principles.

2. A collaborative updating and revision of the ‘Master Plan: Perspective 2025’ in response to the reality of Auroville’s bioregion and today’s global challenges, including methodologies and commitments to ensure the creation and timely execution of Detailed Development Plans.

3. The creation of an internal self-governance assessment and development plan by the Residents’ Assembly leading to effective structural and operational reforms.

Breaking with tradition, and in contrast to the current International Advisory Council, the present Governing Board has not engaged even once with the community for a real dialogue.

The values and practices that guided all previous Auroville administrations need to be reinstated in keeping with the Auroville Charter, the teaching of Sri Aurobindo, and the Auroville Foundation Act. This requires the restoration of balance, mutuality, and collaboration among the three statutory bodies as specified by the Act. The following are the conditions and actions needed:

A. Cessation of all actions at the root of the discord, including:

• all acts of destruction, coercion, intimidation, and punishment against Auroville residents, including actions involving the filing of false or frivolous criminal cases;

• spreading false narratives and undermining Auroville’s achievements;

• delaying, suspending or reducing the duration of recommendations for visa renewals by making sweeping allegations of ‘anti-Government’ activities against those perceived to be critical of the administration;

• censoring freedom of speech, threatening people’s homes and livelihoods, and maintaining control of Auroville’s funds and assets without consultation with residents;

• forceful seizure of Auroville’s internal governance mechanisms.

B. Restoration of operational balance by respecting and restoring:

• the community’s powers and functions through the Residents’ Assembly and its committees as affirmed by the Auroville Foundation Act, including its freedom to experiment in accordance with the Auroville Charter;

• the role of the Governing Board acting in partnership with the two other statutory bodies as called for by the Act;

• the active role and recommendations of the International Advisory Council;

• participatory and transparent decision-making at all levels of governance, while rejecting unilateral and unaccountable administrative orders;

• community platforms for information-sharing, and communication channels to provide accurate information to the Indian Government and other relevant stakeholders;

• protection for residents from unjust or discriminatory treatment.

C. Re-establishment of core values and principles, including:

• the foundational values of fidelity, respect, and mutuality upheld by all other administrations;

• genuine dialogue, consultation, and participation among the three statutory bodies;

• active participation by Auroville experts in planning, development, and all other essential services and units;

• use of participatory, collaborative, and inclusive approaches like Auroville’s “Dreamweaving” process to enable a synthesis of views in keeping with Auroville’s mission to achieve unity in diversity.

D. Dialogue and Reconciliation

Successful conflict resolution depends upon sincere dialogue and reconciliation. Each party must commit to finding mutually acceptable solutions. That condition does not exist in the current circumstances.

The Residents’ Assembly and International Advisory Council have repeatedly reached out to the Governing Board to engage in sincere dialogue and participatory problem-solving, but the Governing Board has rejected all entreaties.

In claiming absolute authority for itself, the Governing Board has repudiated the legitimacy of the Residents’ Assembly and dismissed the need to sincerely engage with the International Advisory Council in the manner laid out in the Auroville Foundation Act. It continues to support coercive actions against Auroville residents. After appropriating all of Auroville’s statutory powers and functions, it has imposed destructive unilateral actions on disenfranchised residents and persists in unilateral, unaccountable decision-making.

The current Governing Board has never engaged meaningfully with Auroville’s residents and its on-the-ground realities and has remained disconnected from them. Board members do not engage with the wider body of residents and do not meet the membership requirements specified by the Auroville Foundation Act, which contributes to a lack of understanding and an inability to guide Auroville toward its founding vision and mission. Breaking with tradition, and in contrast to the current International Advisory Council, the present Governing Board has not engaged even once with the community for a real dialogue.

A successful resolution of Auroville’s governance crisis is within reach – but requires conditions of trust, confidence, safety and openness. Actions must be taken to establish such conditions. The Residents’ Assembly and International Advisory Council are eager to proceed. The Governing Board has so far remained intransigent and adversarial. Its previous Secretary, Dr. Jayanti Ravi, who spearheaded the destructive actions detailed in this report, finished her term in July 2024, but the Board’s appointees have continued to follow the same path.

The Secretary needs to engage in authentic dialogue to understand the residents’ perspectives. At the same time, the Board needs to recognise and meet with the duly selected representatives of the Residents’ Assembly, such as the Working Committee, to mutually establish a positive way forward.

The current Governing Board is due to end its term in October 2025. This provides an opportunity for a newly constituted Board to press forward with constructive changes. Such a Board, it is to be hoped, will be comprised of qualified members who are knowledgeable of Sri Aurobindo’s and the Mother’s teachings and the vision underlying the township, and who are dedicated to resolving the conflict in collaboration with the other two statutory bodies in the spirit of the Auroville Charter, the philosophy of Sri Aurobindo, and both the letter and spirit of the Auroville Foundation Act.

This is a requirement and duty of the residents as stated in the Auroville Foundation Act and is specified by the ‘Master Plan: Perspective 2025’ as work to be performed by the residents at regular intervals.

E. Update and Revise the Master Plan

The ‘Master Plan: Perspective 2025’ needs to be updated and revised. Although titled a “Master Plan”, this document is only a broad conceptual framework for township development.

Twenty-five years have passed since it was created. It needs to reflect today’s socio-economic realities and environmental needs and integrate up-to-date studies, innovations, and best practices in urban planning and environmental sustainability.

This recommendation applies specifically to the Auroville community through the Residents’ Assembly, since this is a requirement and duty of the residents as stated in the Auroville Foundation Act and is specified by the ‘Master Plan: Perspective 2025’ as work to be performed by the residents at regular intervals.

Of course, this requires that the rightful authority and space to undertake this responsibility are returned to the community and its selected planning and development group.

The ‘Master Plan: Perspective 2025’ proposes a broad municipal planning effort with an emphasis on flexibility: “It will neither be traditional nor rigid.” Since its publication in 2001, Auroville has taken tangible steps toward building the necessary infrastructure for the future city – a process that was interrupted in 2021 with the arrival of the new administration and its takeover of the planning and development function, leading to a disproportionate focus on building unnecessary roads.

The new Master Plan should be aligned with Perspective 2025’s conceptual framework, yet adapted to the evolving on-ground realities required to sustain a larger urban centre integrated with the surrounding rural communities, and included Detailed Development Plans (DDPs) which are effectively executed.     

After taking control of the planning and development function, the current administration launched extravagantly costly road-building and opaque land exchanges, bypassing resident experts while bulldozing existing developments and uprooting over 10,000 trees. The plan to create a “perfectly circular road” before a Detailed Development Plan (DDP) was formulated for the future city, was hasty, unprofessional, and resulted in a poorly constructed road made of substandard materials. It did not take into account the damage that would be done to several important water catchment areas. Concerns expressed about such actions by the Residents’ Assembly and members of the International Advisory Council were repeatedly rejected, violating both the practical needs and flexible spirit envisioned by the ‘Master Plan: Perspective 2025’.

The Governing Board’s attempt to rapidly increase Auroville’s population to 50,000 inhabitants through unilateral and coercive measures has been protested by the Residents’ Assembly and members of the International Advisory Council. Both have emphasised that growth should align with Auroville’s long-term values and long-term sustainability goals, serving as a model to the world. Concerns about the administration’s actions have been expressed by Indian and international experts in urban, land, water, energy, education, and social fields. Renewed attention from the Government of India is needed in keeping with its commitment to protect Auroville’s development along with the welfare of the lands and peoples in Auroville and its bioregion.

A fresh start is needed to develop and effectively execute the Master Plan. Residents and experts from India and abroad should be involved in a collaborative, multidisciplinary effort spearheaded by the Resident Assembly’s planning and development working group as called for by the Auroville Foundation Act. Several actionable steps were proposed and many studies completed by diverse experts and external consultants prior to 2021. They need to be brought back for review and incorporated in updating and revising the Plan.

In addition to in-depth studies by Auroville’s own experts, Prof. Raag Yadava’s work, ‘Governance in Auroville’ (2023), identified further steps to expedite the process, emphasising the need to align the original Galaxy concept with the development of a Detailed Development Plan (DDP) and sub-DDPs through measures such as mobility systems analysis and the incorporation of socioeconomic and ecological considerations for sustainable development. These recommendations have not been addressed by the current administration, whose plans are not openly shared with the community or other stakeholders.

Special attention needs to be given to methodologies and commitments to overcome obstacles to progress that occurred in the past, as explained below.

Restoring mutual respect and harmonious functioning requires a transparent assessment that addresses root causes.

F. Execute a Self-Organization Action Plan

It’s well known that the Auroville community experienced numerous challenges in developing an efficient system of self-governance before the takeover in 2021. Auroville residents acknowledge that mistakes were made, and things could have been handled differently. That said, these issues have been selectively distorted, exaggerated, and mischaracterised to legitimise the takeover, and continue to be cited as justification for the many unsupportable extrajudicial and coercive measures detailed in this report.

To establish a positive direction for Auroville going forward it’s necessary to be clear about the nature of the challenges.

a. Confronting the Challenges

Auroville residents follow Sri Aurobindo’s teaching and the Auroville Charter in seeking to evolve adaptive frameworks of participatory governance that can express its goal of, as the Charter states, being a site of “material and spiritual researches for a living embodiment of an actual human unity”. 

Experimentation in developing new forms of self-organisation is central to that mission. The complexities represented by a community containing nearly 3,300 people from more than 60 nations make the work uniquely demanding.

There’s no question that Auroville has faced internal and external concerns about self-organisation problems that seemed intractable. The community readily acknowledges the hurdles and agrees that more effort must be made to surmount them. False claims by the present administration to the contrary, no one advocates a return to the status quo before 2021. Residents embrace the need for practical change reforms.

A successfully negotiated resolution to the present crisis requires support for the Residents’ Assembly to conduct a diagnosis of the community’s system of governance before the takeover, leading to positive structural and operational changes. Restoring mutual respect and harmonious functioning requires a transparent assessment that addresses root causes. A start was made on this in a 2015 Auroville Retreat. While there was some follow-up after the Retreat, much work is needed to deepen this initial assessment and implement changes according to the findings.

Experience has shown this to be an exceptionally complex, challenging undertaking. To be successful, it requires a committed three-way partnership and collaboration between the Residents’ Assembly, the Governing Board, and the International Advisory Council – precisely as the Auroville Foundation Act envisaged. The process must be based on the principles of mutuality, respect, and inclusion. The intricacy of the task cannot be solved by diktat and coercion or by attempting to bypass the need for participatory engagement in the name of ‘efficiency’. 

b. An Effective Action Plan

An effective self-governance assessment and action plan will forthrightly address community issues that arose in the past. These include: decision-making paralysis that derailed Detailed Development Plans (DDPs) caused by rigid positions held by a few residents at both ends of the “city” issue; lack of effective accountability and enforcement mechanisms and feedback loops; a frequent inability to translate ideas into action; and challenges in building consensus through the Residents’ Assembly as an umbrella organisation. The assessment will also need to address resistance to recommendations from previous Governing Boards, International Advisory Councils, and external experts.

These issues and proposals to overcome them are highlighted in Prof. Yadava’s report, ‘Governance in Auroville’, which underscores the need for a “clear distinction between legislative and executive domains [with] dispute resolution and enforcement mechanisms” and the introduction of “standardised and short-term reporting mechanisms”. 

In short, a new framework of Auroville’s self-governance is needed that allows for the effective participation by residents at various levels, enables Working Groups to operate without bureaucratic entanglements, and allows the community to establish policies that link short-term needs to Auroville’s long-term vision, using clearly defined medium-term objectives as stepping stones.

Experimentation in new forms of participatory governance is part of Auroville’s raison d’être. It is essential that the community’s authority and responsibilities be restored. Space to experiment, to learn from mistakes, and to try again and again is essential. The freedom to make and correct errors is indispensable for both individual and collective development.

It is also necessary for the community to learn from the past and redouble its commitment to develop more effective forms of self-governance. The collaborative development of a transparent self-assessment led by the Residents’ Assembly, supported by the two other statutory bodies, leading to the creation and execution of a participatory governance-development and action plan is essential. It should be a major priority for the Auroville Foundation as a unified whole.

As these actions take effect, Auroville will thrive in its mission to evolve individual and collective consciousness.

Alone among nations, it is India that has allowed and nurtured the birth and growth of Auroville on its soil. It has done so for more than half a century. Only India has the capacity to truly understand and appreciate this bold experiment, which is rooted in its ancient tradition while pointing humankind and the community of nations toward the future. India deserves the world’s gratitude. It is right that the Indian government should reaffirm that Auroville is a welcome development on its soil, and fitting that it should ensure that its development reflects the highest values of the dharma, the Auroville Foundation Act, and the Auroville Charter.

The conditions and actions outlined in this section comprise a blueprint to inaugurate a positive future for Auroville and its mission of accelerating human progress. The blueprint is clear, actionable and achievable. It calls for the creation of a plan with four specific steps.

Re-Establish Balance and Mutuality Among the Three Statutory Bodies

In accordance with the Auroville Foundation Act and the principles of the Auroville Charter, government officials must foster a new level of collaboration between the Residents’ Assembly, the International Advisory Council, and the Governing Board to manifest Auroville’s purpose as a living laboratory aspiring to realise unity in diversity.    

Restore Roles and Responsibilities for Auroville Residents

The rights, protections, and freedoms of Auroville’s residents guaranteed under the Auroville Foundation Act to conduct activities promoting the Charter must be restored. This will attract new residents skilled in diverse fields who will drive sustainable urban-rural development and economic prosperity. A renewal of energy will be fostered through the affirmation and practice of the principles of Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga, positioning Auroville as both a global leader and a unique experiment for today’s world grounded in India’s immemorial spiritual principles.    

Update and Revise the Master Plan

The re-establishment of balance among Auroville’s residents as well as between the three governance bodies must occur in tandem with collaboration in delivering Detailed Development Plans, ensuring that the conceptual ‘Master Plan: 2025’ is revised and a formal Master Plan is formulated with multidisciplinary expertise and implemented without further delay.    

Complete a Residents’ Self-Organisation Assessment and Action Plan

With the support and guidance of the other two statutory bodies, the Residents’ Assembly needs to carry out a transparent self-organisation assessment and implement an effective action plan that drives necessary reforms and opens new pathways for progress.  

As these actions take effect, Auroville will thrive in its mission to evolve individual and collective consciousness, fully embodying the spiritual vision of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. The values of its Charter will guide Auroville’s governance and daily life, with all parties mentioned in the Auroville Foundation Act dedicated to translating its founding vision into reality and manifesting Auroville as a beacon of hope from India to the world.