Population

There are important questions to be asked regarding the population of Auroville. Firstly, who decided that the intended population of the township would be 50,000, and is this figure immutable, fixed, or can it be adjusted?

For years, our annual population review was a prosaic, statistically-detailed piece, with musings on which nationals were moving to Auroville in increasing or decreasing numbers.

Normally the population review is a prosaic, gentle piece to write, padding out a statistical survey by noticing subtle quirks, long-term trends and trying our best to bring the figures to life.

The Auroville Town Development Council appointed by the Secretary of the Auroville Foundation Office plans for the addition of 12,000 new residents by 2025.

The minutes of the 57th meeting of the Governing Board held in December last year mention the need for a more welcoming Entry Process to allow for a speedy growth of Auroville’s population to 15,000 by 2025.

In the November issue of Auroville Today, a group of Aurovilian architects and town planners discussed the Galaxy plan and concluded that it still had much to offer.

The population table published in the previous edition of Auroville Today contained a serious mistake. At the end of the population table on page 7, column 1 was mistakenly copied into column 3.

The last several months have seen a major churn in the Entry Service with heated policy debates, multiple General Meetings and frequent team turnover.

As of October this year, we are 2565 residents in Auroville from 52 nations. Looking at the population numbers over the years (see Figure 1: Total number of residents from 1997 to 2016), we seem to be coasting along nicely.

Question: what’s new about our 2014 population statistics? Answer: virtually nothing. The Indian population has increased by less than 3%, the German nationals number a few more, the French a few less, but these three nations still make up two thirds of our so-called ‘international’ community.