Named after Sri Aurobindo and based on his vision for the future, Auroville was created as a planned city for the evolution of humanity. Towards this, the Mother, Sri Aurobindo’s spiritual collaborator, invited the architect, Roger Anger, in 1965, gave him a brief and worked with him for the next three years until she approved the final plan known as the Galaxy, in 1968. But, before that, in 1966, the architect and his team made a presentation on Auroville and its city plan at UNESCO, Paris, at Mother’s request. This reveals Auroville as a city with a spiritual centre placed on a lake and surrounded by gardens.
Their brief speaks of a city powered by solar energy, optimising pedestrian flow instead of polluting cars, rainwater harvesting, the use of natural air conditioning, and streets with shade to ease walkability: a forerunner of sustainable planning now being emulated across the world, which a faction of residents remains ignorant of, despite all information being available in the public domain of Auroville.
The City Plan, intrinsic sustainability
For the experiment to succeed, the Mother limited the population to 50,000 residents with a corresponding urban plan, where all aspects for an evolving humanity would find place. Created for humanity as a whole, as stated in the opening line of the Charter, this experiment was nevertheless aimed at those ready to make a commitment, as the Charter also states: But to live in Auroville, one must be a willing servitor of the Divine Consciousness.
On February 28, 1968, the Galaxy Plan was displayed at the entrance of the Amphitheatre and the Charter read out. All men of goodwill were invited to this extraordinary experiment and city, provided they had a thirst for progress and aspired to a higher and truer life.
By 1969, the Mother hired Roger Anger to prepare the first master plan study. Here the most important element after the Matrimandir, the Crown, was presented in detail. Yet, it has had to wait through years of impasse after the Mother’s passing, court cases and, finally, the Auroville Foundation Act, enacted in 1988. With this, the process of formulating an official master plan was undertaken by residents at the request of the Governing Board, as stipulated in the Act, and received all approvals by 2001. It is understood that obstruction or abuse against the Charter or the City plan is wholly against the spirit of Auroville.
However, all attempts to simply mark the Crown on the ground, let alone build it, met with constant obstruction by a resident faction. It took over 20 years, many letters from residents to the Governing Board to break the impasse, and 25 court cases against the Auroville Foundation and working groups (including a case filed at the National Green Tribunal claiming Auroville to be a “deemed forest”) to finally allow the Crown to happen.
To be noted, the NGT itself struck down the grounds that Auroville was a “deemed forest”, yet proceeded to not only admit the case but also issue a verdict, which the Supreme Court of India has now stayed absolutely.
This caused another two-year delay in the manifestation of Auroville, which appears, more and more, the aim of the faction: to obstruct the manifestation of the city; to stall and stall again until people lose interest and the obstructing residents win back their green exclusive fiefdoms and to keep the 3,000 acres of Auroville land gated and guarded for the enjoyment of a handful.
Active solutions
Contrary to false propaganda about the removal of green cover, of attempting to implement an outdated plan, of a narrow and rigid interpretation of the visionary and “yantric” Galaxy Plan, the solutions which Auroville offered already between 1965 and 1972, still remain the active solutions for the problems that plague the world.
Auroville is not yet another city in the making; it is, in its very conception and planning, the ‘City the Earth Needs’. It is a vision-driven city and far exceeds the means and knowledge at hand in 1965, when planning started.
For example, Auroville was envisioned as a pedestrian city with slow moving e-vehicles only — a concept which was not yet born in a world that was still dreaming of fossil fuel and fast-moving machines to speed up human life. Similarly, at a time when the concept of carbon footprint and food miles had not yet surfaced in the consciousness of humanity, Auroville was conceived as a city (five square kilometres) surrounded by a Green Belt, three times its size (15 sq. km) to provide food for its inhabitants and employment for the bioregion.
Out of 1,212 acres of city area, 164 acres are green parks in the city, 3,637 acres are lands making up the Green Belt comprising farms and plantations; the Galaxy footprint only occupies 448 acres of land. That means 764 acres are unbuilt area out of which at least 164 acres (park area) are unpaved and actually green — which makes for an unparalleled 38% of actual green area within the city alone.
The Auroville plan accounts for 212 square metre a person against the 10 sq.m to 12 sq.m. of open space a person recommended by the Urban and Regional Development Plans, Formulation and Implementation Guidelines (URDPFI), 2014.
It may be noted that all the roads of the Auroville Master Plan together take up merely 1.64% of the total land earmarked for Auroville.
Certainly, trees were planted from the beginning which has done much good to the soil quality, to the water table, and to the microclimate of Auroville. But while the tree plantation was always only meant to be a temporary measure to rejuvenate the soil or grow timber, until the city could be built, much of it came to be done with a vengeance, with an aim to distort the plan, and block any development.
This and many other endeavours, with no approvals, became the means of appropriation and trees — most were the imported invasive, water-sucker Acacia auriculiformis — the weapons to claim territory in the name of forests or ecology.
Instead of priorisiting land for the city area, enormous amounts collected as donations in the name of Auroville, went into consolidating a few acres every year, mostly in the Green Belt. In the face of this apathy land prices began to skyrocket and more developers moved in.
The new impetus for the project
Over 10 years ago, the previous Chairman of the Governing Board had made arrangements so that Auroville could exchange land outside the Master Plan and start securing the city area. In fact, the proposal then, as now, was met with strong opposition and nothing was done.
In 2021 the Secretary, Jayanti Ravi was appointed. Her hope of coming to administer a visionary town with an evolved society was confronted with public abuse, denial of all requests to collaborate and media vilification campaigns targeting her personally and the Auroville Foundation, and any Aurovilian standing in their way. Court cases followed, and the Crown that had waited for decades was again blocked and the Master Plan declared unsustainable, un-ecological, and something to discard.
Fortunately for Auroville, this time, both the Secretary and the Governing Board decided to stand their ground for the envisioned project of Auroville at this critical time.
To strike a balance between the land consolidation needs of Auroville on the one hand and the value perceptions of outlying lands on the other, the Auroville Foundation formed a team of professionals to arrive at the best possible deal while, at the same time, maintaining a good pace so that land consolidation for the city area can be completed at the earliest.
It may be noted that the value of the lands needed for Auroville cannot be determined only on the basis of prevailing guideline values as fixed by the State government keeping in view that the Auroville Foundation only needs the lands lying within the Auroville Master Plan. The value of a road-facing land may be high for a commercial developer while for Auroville and the Foundation, the land inside the city area of Auroville is close to being invaluable.
The steps followed in land consolidation by the Auroville Foundation involve the Land Board, the Special Officer appointed for land matters, a government-approved evaluator as well as the Land Committee of the Governing Board and the Ministry of Education.
Auroville has waited very long, but we are confident that the force that prevails over Auroville and drives its progress, despite many obstacles, is actually the strongest, shortest, most comprehensive and divine way forward for the future of the world and humanity.
Anu Majumdar is an Auroville-based author
Published – November 15, 2024 04:32 am IST
