A Call to the Future

Till that is reached our journeying cannot cease.

– Sri Aurobindo, Savitri

The city already exists.

– Mother, April 23, 1966, Mother’s Agenda

This is a framework study that paints a broad-picture perspective of Auroville’s vision, growth and development, identifying key areas of progress and challenges for the future. In doing so, we navigate between Mother and Sri Aurobindo’s ideals, understood in the background of global urban movements and the empirical picture. The spiritual ideal, represented not just symbolically, but physically, in the concentration of Mother’s force palpable in the Matrimandir – the construction of which represents a singularly important achievement of Auroville – served as a constant reminder of the path to be trod.

While great progress has been made in establishing the physical base for the city by pioneering and exemplary green works over the past fifty years, with a notable outreach architecture in the bioregion, the vital infrastructure – represented in services, housing, economy etc. – and mental infrastructure – represented in research, collective planning, institutional coordination etc. – are works in progress, proceeding unsystematically at a rather slow pace. While there are several widely acclaimed enterprises developed through individual initiative, collectively, the records show a stagnation, or creative inertia, particularly in urban infrastructure development, socio-economic planning and population growth. Many opportunities have been missed in the process. This is particularly so since the 2001 Perspective Master Plan. Most development goals in the document are yet to be met, and in some sectors, work is yet to start. The causes for this stagnation are varied, from ability (lack of funding, human resources and expertise) to willingness (adherence to the status quo, altered incentive structures to build and a dilution of the vision) and prolonged internal disagreements, demonstrating a lack of unity.

It would be naïve to think that the imperfections of human nature, our characteristic humours and tempers, would not be reflected in Auroville’s collective. On the contrary, Auroville must contain a vast catalogue of problems, representative of our collective ills, for it to be the ‘city the Earth needs.’ They are part of the evolutionary game Auroville is to play:

There is a purpose in each stumble and fall;

Nature’s most careless lolling is a pose

Preparing some forward step, some deep result,

Ingenious notes plugged into a motived score,

These million discords dot the harmonious theme

Of the evolution’s huge orchestral dance.

Auroville’s establishment, early pioneering efforts and, indeed, its continued existence despite formidable challenges are a miracle. This owes to a host of Aurovilians whose boldness, imagination and selfless dedication to the work serve to inspire. Yet, as in any project of this scale and ambition, it is one that requires rejuvenation to prepare for the next stage of growth. Our analysis of governance structures suggests pathways for reform. These include:

1. Defined procedural rules for channelized and informed decision-making within a bicameral Residents’ Assembly, divided between a Council of Residents and a Council of the Wise.

2. Developing confederated decision-making models at the sub-zonal and zonal levels, with subsidiarity-based financial allocations for zonal action.

3. Strengthening the executive mandate of the Zonal Groups and sub-zonal bodies. (SAIIER, ABC, ABS etc.)

4. Instituting legislative Zonal Assemblies, with representation to the Residents’ Assembly.

5. Developing an independent channel in the ‘Unity Committee’ for evaluation and monitoring.

6. Instituting a commonly constituted Steering Group across the three statutory bodies for external evaluation and monitoring.

7. Restructuring the selection, operation and evaluation mechanisms of Working Groups for expert-led and expert-constituted bodies as opposed to a popular vote under the Participatory Working Groups Selection Guidelines, with provisional selection contingent on drafting a commonly-agreed upon work plan.

8. A restructuring of the current mandates of the TDC, FAMC and other Working Groups for manageable, efficient and accountable working, along the proposed framework.

9. Extending Working Group term limits.

10. Developing defined, robust and time-bound community consultation platforms to allow for effective, but not inflated, participation, with decision-making resting with the Working Group along the principle of ‘illumined hierarchies.’

11. A defined separation of legislative and executive powers between the Residents’ Assembly and Working Groups.

12. Developing a common administrative, managerial and human resources pool for Working Groups.

13. Instituting advisory boards for each Working Group to leverage external expertise and termly reports to the Unity Committee for mid-term accountability.

14. Developing a city-wide continuous digital learning platform embedded in each sector for learning and informed decision-making.

15. Developing a tiered, easy access dispute resolution mechanism, along the proposed framework.

16. Rationalizing / streamlining / codifying policies, codes of conduct, regulations, rules, office and standing order, customs in plain language.

17. Developing a city-wide governance dashboard with an independent data collection and statistics cell to effectively conduct the complex task of city-development.

...the old has been rejected, but the new is yet to be found.

Constructing a city dedicated to the Divine is the work of an age – the great efforts of the past that have brought Auroville to where it is today are a springboard to the ‘great adventure’ of the future. The pioneering days, particularly with Mother at the helm, placed Auroville at the forefront, materially and spiritually. But this status is not guaranteed today. Much remains to be done in all sectors, and in many, beginnings are yet to be made.

This view was shared by many in the community: ‘there is a tremendous thirst for change, for movement forward based upon our ideals.’ We were met in conversations with a refreshing and timely self-reflective poise that Auroville is at an inflection point for the next stage of its growth. It needs a conscious re-alignment with the vision where deviations or dilutions have occurred. Renewed energy and idealism matched with concrete and practical steps for this next stage can allow for a conscious gathering of energies to propel the city forward. Equally, a spirit of mutuality between the three statutory bodies, the Residents’ Assembly, Governing Board and International Advisory Council, is indispensable going forward.

Building Mother’s city is a difficult and joyous task, ‘rich with life’s adventure and delight’, much as was the construction of the Matrimandir. The majestic spiritual vision, a culmination of terrestrial evolution through the descent of the supramental, is at once irresistible in its logic yet elusive to our immediate grasp, and the mode of practice disarmingly simple yet demanding. For this, Auroville must naturally tailor-make its own developmental model through robust research and experimentation; yet, it seems to be in a prolonged intermediate stage where the old has been rejected, but the new is yet to be found. In this, inertia and timidity have settled in. An openness to developments elsewhere, a cross-fertilization with emerging streams of thought, as also an invitation for others to participate and bring fresh energy into the system, is helpful to move the city forward and importantly, avoid entrenchment and an unhelpful negative self-definition (‘we are not what the others are’). As is the vitality of bold actions and experimentation, to ‘grow … with the full play of the unexpected’, offered in an aspiration to the ideal, which ‘builds in ignorance the steps of light’. This spirit of undeterred, intense action, whether it leads to immediate success or failure, is the material offering for the growth of the inner flame of Auroville. As Sri Aurobindo wrote in The Human Cycle:

Failures must be originally numerous in everything great and difficult, but the time comes when the experience of past failures can be profitably used and the gate that so long resisted opens.

The point, as Mother often noted, is to make the attempt. There is perhaps no better inspiration than the unhindered promise and vitality infused in these lines in Savitri:

The nude god-children in their play-fields ran

Smiting the winds with splendour and with speed;

Of storm and sun they made companions,

Sported with the white mane of tossing seas

Slew distance trampled to death under their wheels

And wrestled in the arenas of their force.

In this spirit, while off-the-shelf solutions may not be apparent in all sectors, immediate actions need not be held hostage: ‘the motto of the aspirant’s endeavour must be the solvitur ambulando of the discoverer. For by the doing the difficulty will be solved.’ In this vein of solving by doing (and not talking), discrete projects that generate broad, even if not uniform, consensus can be acted upon immediately and with a sense of urgency to generate a helpful momentum.

As urbanization peaks and the evolutionary crisis deepens, the world needs a city like Auroville to lead the New Creation.

It was telling that most discussants agreed to most development priorities identified in this study and urged strong action. Yet, a common feature across our research was a lack of unity, a frustration with the collective and a felt blocking of energies, almost arithmetically so with each idea receiving an equal and opposite pull. This is not a new problem. In a long conversation dated March, 1972, Mother diagnosed the problem and suggested a cure:

Yes, yes, yes – yes, exactly. Exactly! Instead of a combination where each one has his place within a harmonious unity, instead of that, everyone pulls in his own direction … You have hit the point: lack of unity is the cause of all the difficulties …

Auroville is ‘decreed’ and ‘success is certain.’ But ‘on one condition – ONE condition’:

… that we become united. Supposedly, we are preaching unity to the world – it would be only decent to do it ourselves! Instead, we are the example of exactly the opposite. To visitors we say, “Here we seek human unity”; but WE constantly quarrel among ourselves, and we preach human unity! That’s absurd. Totally absurd! We can’t even be ONE in our own work.

Resolving these contrary pulls is inevitable in Sri Aurobindo’s evolutionary scheme of things – the question is whether Auroville does it swiftly or slowly, with more or less pain in the process. Recent disagreements over Auroville’s governance, many of which are before the courts, have divided the community and surfaced latent tensions for resolution. This presents a necessary churn, an infusion of energy to reflect on past problems and ‘spring boldly to the future’ together – ‘if the heart were not forced to want and weep / his soul would have lain down content, at ease.’ As Sri Aurobindo reminds us:

Often the decisive turn is preceded by an apparent emphasising and raising to their extreme of things which seem the very denial, the most uncompromising opposite of the new principle and the new creation.

To conclude, we note that Mother once said that Auroville has ‘the possibility of a breathtaking success.’ This possibility, unrealized still, can be palpably felt in the atmosphere. As urbanization peaks and the evolutionary crisis deepens, the world needs a city like Auroville to lead the New Creation. Manifesting it requires a collective effort, a bold and playful one, for which finding that unity and fraternity is now key.

Rich-hearted, wonderful to each other met

In the mutual marvelling of their myriad notes

And dwelt like brothers of one family

Who had found their common and mysterious home.