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15 Nov 2024, 17:02

https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/much-needed- impetus-to-making-auroville-a-city-of-the-future/

article68869905.ece

Much-needed impetus to making Auroville a ‘city of the

future’

PREMIUM

Land consolidation for the city

area is being overseen in a

professional way

Published - November 15, 2024 04:32 am IST

ANU MAJUMDAR

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‘Auroville is a vision-driven city’ | Photo Credit: Getty Images

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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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