Response from three IAC members

17 August 2025

Dear Shri Ravi ji,

We write in connection with an MoU signed between the Auroville Foundation and IIT Madras, which invites IIT Madras to establish in Auroville a 100-acre “sustainability campus”. A recent article in The Hindu on this MoU and the IIT Madras project is attached. From the location it mentions and from a recent email received by the Annapurna Farm, it is clear that the planned campus is to be established on the 135-acre land occupied by that farm.

While the IIT Madras project has obvious merits, we are deeply concerned that carving a campus for it out of Annapurna Farm will have far-reaching negative consequences. Kindly consider the following:

• Annapurna Farm was established on bare lands purchased in the late 1960s, during Mother’s time. On 25 March 1970, Mother explained to a disciple, “You see, we had planned a lot of lands around the city for large-scale agriculture for the city’s consumption. But to cultivate those lands, for the moment we need money, or else materials.”

• In line with Mother’s approach, from the 1980s onward a few Aurovilians developed Annapurna Farm into a flourishing farm through sheer hard work and with funding coming entirely from private sources.

• Annapurna Farm has been and is one of the most productive farms in Auroville, supplying year after year to the community tons of grain, fruits and dairy products. It has also established a food-processing unit (so as to reduce wastage of harvested produce), which also processes produce from other Auroville farms.

• From its inception, Annapurna Farm pioneered techniques of organic farming — long before the recent interest in the field. It remains a shining example of organic farming. Besides, as the farm’s stewards trained a number of volunteers, it has inspired similar developments elsewhere.

• Farming apart, through afforestation and water conservation, the farm has completely regenerated the environment, benefitting the region around it. Auroville has been praised all over India, and indeed the world over, for its work of eco-restoration and environmental conservation, a work that is more relevant and needed with every passing year. It is no surprise that Auroville’s experts are constantly consulted for various projects (including governmental ones) in India.

• The proposed project represents a diversion from the land’s original purpose to a non-agricultural purpose. Besides, it has been formulated without consultation with the farm’s founders and stewards, the community at large or our Council.

We also recall how the Governing Board raised on several occasions Auroville’s failure to achieve self-sufficiency in food production. While this is a complex issue, we wish to stress here the paradox of destroying 100 acres of productive land painstakingly nurtured over decades in the name of establishing a “sustainability campus”. Such a step, we submit, would have a highly negative impact on the environment and would greatly reduce the amount of food produced in Auroville, creating a domino effect in this regard.

We earnestly appeal to you to save Annapurna Farm and ask IIT Madras to find another location for its project. Indeed, we submit that a “sustainability campus” ought to be established on some degraded land outside Auroville, with its regeneration as the first objective — which is precisely the work Auroville has been doing for decades. Given the vast financial and human resources IIT Madras has at its disposal, it should have no difficulty in relocating this project to a more appropriate location. A collaboration with Auroville’s experts, who have solid experience in the field, could certainly be envisaged to ensure the success of the project.

Requesting your decisive intervention in this matter,

With warm regards,

Dena Merriam, IAC chairperson
Gabi Gillessen, IAC member
Michel Danino, IAC member