Green Belt

In the previous issue of Auroville Today we published the major considerations and decisions of the Governing Board as reported in the minutes of its 67th Governing Board meeting held in Auroville on 31 May 2024.

Prashant Hedao was the Regional Planning Coordinator of L’Avenir d’Auroville, Auroville’s Town Planning Department, from 2007-2010. In those years he worked closely together with then Governing Board member Dr BV Doshi on the Auroville Master Plan.

On 6th January, 2012, Michael Bonke, along with Toine van Megen and Harald Kraft, made a presentation to the Auroville community about Auroville’s future energy and drinking water needs [published in AVToday # 271, February 2012].

On June 9th, the Auroville International Advisory Council (IAC) shared with the community that during a joint meeting with the GB on May 31st, it had called for a more transparent and inclusive land exchange process.

April 2024. Trucks are driving up and down, day and night, to transport earth dug up from the second section temporary hillock opposite the Town Hall.

From the website it became known that the Auroville Foundation Office has invited many tenders for carrying out various works. Amongst them are: doing a digital topographical survey for the area beyond the Outer Ring Road up to the Green Belt region and a complete layout for Auroville from the centre to the Green Belt; a tender for the execution of the balance portion of the Crown Road, including the provision of led street lighting; a tender for the construction of the Darkali bridge at the Crown Road; a tender for the construction of the Outer Ring Road from the secondary service node to the Visitor’s Centre Parking, including led street lighting; and the demarcation of service nodes and proposed building location as per layout.

The Board in-principle approved the construction of a boundary wall around the inner circle of the outer ring road. As the costs of erecting a barbed wire fencing are cheaper to the tune of about 50% to the cost for prefabricated cement structure, the Central Public Works Department (CPWD) submitted a revised quotation for Rs.18.69 crores.

Land exchange is very much in the news at present, with Auroville land being exchanged for privately-owned land in AuroOrchard and mooted as a possibility in places like Forecomers and Pebble Garden.

On 18th November, a meeting was organised by Community Connect for the four working groups that work with the AVF – the WC, the FAMC, the ATDC and an alternative RAS – to make presentations and answer questions from community members.

Auroville Green (Belt) Services is a new group formed by the FO FAMC. A few of the existing Forest Group members decided to join the newly formed group, but the Forest Group clarified that these members joined this group in their personal capacity and in no way are a voice of the Forest Group.

Covering about 25 acres in the northeast part of the Greenbelt, Aurogreen is one of Auroville’s oldest farms and was the first to go organic.

One of the disagreements concerns The Mother’s approval of the Master Plan. Some people, including the Secretary, believe that Mother’s vision for Auroville is laid down in the Master Plan – one person even stated that she had approved it.

Since the start of the seventh year of Acres for Auroville, thanks to donors to Acres for Auroville and Lands For Auroville United, six new Greenbelt plots have been purchased, adding 6.47 acres of rich agricultural land and helping consolidate other land.

The A4A team reports on the results of supporters’ solidarity.

Shortly after a General Meeting held on the topic of these Regulations on 12th April, 2019, the Working Committee updated the Governing Board about this meeting and informed the Board about a section in the Form I of the 2019 Regulations stating that “[...]

For many years Paul Vincent has been involved with trying to protect the land of Auroville. Here he gives his views on the present situation in which private developments in the Auroville area are mushrooming, and suggests what can be done about it.

I am currently 50, I live in Denver Colorado with my husband, Murugan and my 13 year old daughter, Rasam. My son Chidambaram is a junior at Harvard.

Professor Ajay Agarwal was the supervisor of this year’s group of graduate students from Queen’s University, Canada. He initiated the original programme six years ago and since then has accompanied five groups of graduate students to do research on different topics in Auroville.

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.

Survey markings in the Greenbelt installed by a consultant working for the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) revealed that plans were afoot to build a four-lane National Highway through the Auroville Green Belt for a length of 3.5 kilometers, crossing the Forecomers, Pitchandikulam and Aurogreen areas.

In December, a group of post-graduate planning students from Queen’s University, Canada, visited Auroville under the auspices of the Auroville Integral Sustainability Institute.

On the 3rd of March this year, Varuna presented their plans for a solar energy plant in a General Meeting (GM). Auroville Today reports on the meeting and looks at the wider issue of solar power in Auroville.

When the members of the Land Board took office in January 2014 they met with a dire scenario. Funds to purchase lands were in short supply, the sale of outlying lands was blocked, land encroachment was rampant, land grabs and falsifications of land documents by outsiders were discovered, and legal assistance was insufficiently available.

Before Auroville was officially founded in 1968 and before the final location of Auroville was decided by the Mother, disparate plots of land had been bought in the surrounding region.

August 15th – Sri Aurobindo’s birthday – was the occasion for the inauguration of new phases in Auroville’s three land fundraising campaigns: Phase 3 of the Acres for Auroville land campaign; the second year of the Green Acres campaign, and the second phase of the Art for Land action.

There are two possibilities. The first is a step-by-step procedure based on the need of the day. This more or less corresponds to how we tackle the problem at present, problems are solved as they come up.

On February 7th, the ‘Landing Auroville Celebration’ held at the Unity Pavillion was an encouraging success. Organised by the joint land fundraising teams of Acres for Auroville, GreenAcres and LFAU, the event’s central message was the sacredness of the land, and the need for an intense collective effort to acquire land in Auroville’s Master Plan area now.

A friend of mine would regularly examine the annual 21st February bonfire to see if the coming year would be a good or a bad one for the Auroville community.

Tom worked for many years in Auroville Water Service and later set up Harvest, an Auroville data collection and water management organization that did much work in the bioregion.

Toby, former director of a public water company supplying water to a province of the Netherlands, is executive ofthe Auroville Water Service.

My experience of Auroville started in August 2013, as an intern at the Auroville Earth Institute. For six months, I had the chance to lead a research project on a promising new technology for construction, Poured Earth Concrete.

Kalya, a Tamil Aurovilian and executive of Progress Landscape and also working for the Town Development Council, has offered 3.5 acres of land situated in the Greenbelt to Auroville.

The Chairman of the Governing Board of the Auroville Foundation, Dr. Karan Singh, in two open letters to the Aurovilians, communicated the Board's concern about the slow progress of land purchase.

The goal of Acres for Auroville is to secure, consolidate, and protect the land in the Matrimandir and International Zone areas. The campaign is a joint effort of Auroville International France with Lands for Auroville Unified (LFAU) in coordination with the LCC (Land Coordination Committee).