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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