Collective cooperation

Lakshay Dharan shifted to Auroville in 2015 and became an Auroville resident in Feb 2018. Since then, he has been active in art, communication, strategy, and organisational work.

For the past three years, we have seen the arrival of another type of Secretary, a new top-down style of governance, and an imposed vision of development of Auroville.

Auroville’s communal fabric is having a difficult time of late with the Residents’ Assembly’s voice being ignored. The recent Selection Process showed that our collective spirit is still in good health.

At present, many people are trying to make sense of what is happening in Auroville. The writings of Sri Aurobindo and Mother are an obvious aid to understanding, but Spiral Dynamics may also provide a useful lens through which to view the current situation and possible next steps.

Gwjwn Daimari first heard about Auroville while he was working on his B.Sc. in Physics at Pondicherry University. He returned to his native Assam after completing his degree but came back in 2022 to explore Auroville.

On 16th February, the Unity Pavilion was full. There was huge interest because it was the first time in the last seven years that residents had met in an open meeting with an International Advisory Council (IAC).

I wonder if this is a shared rationale, and whether being exposed from a young age to a dynamic and participatory learning environment is conducive to engaging in creating such opportunities.

I finished my undergrad studies in architecture in 2017 from Bangalore. I come from Ayodhya, in Uttar Pradesh. During my stay in Auroville, I lived in several places including ‘La Maison des Jeunes’ which influenced me to make 0 comic strip relating to the community.

The recent community gathering on the topics What are you here for? and What are we here for? was inspiring. There was a strong collective aspiration for changes in our governance, our economy and ourselves so as to ally them more with our ideals.

Special events are celebrated in all parts of the world. Have you ever been in a big city, like Paris or London, when they are celebrating something like Christmas or the New Year?

Looking at some of the old issues of Auroville Today, it’s fascinating to see how some of the articles could have been written just last week.

The 5th Auroville Film Festival was held from December 16-23, 2017. With more than 275 films screened in three venues, this edition of the Film Festival was the largest yet.

In 1969, I was attending the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, studying engineering physics. It was through a librarian there that I was put in touch with Sri Aurobindo’s writings.

Mother gave broad and clear directives that form the basis of Auroville’s socio-economic organization and vision: a communal economy with no private property and no exchange of money between community members, each of whom would contribute to the collective in one of three ways – work, kind, or money – and whose basic needs, would, in turn, be provided for by the community.

The Auroville Urban Farming project was started by Riccardo, a long term volunteer studying Food Security in Auroville, with the aid of Luigi in late 2014.

Recently, Auroville residents were invited to participate in a new series of the Evolutionary Café which take place every two weeks in the Unity Pavilion.