I have been really distressed by the abrupt turn of events at the Youth Center on Saturday 4th, especially during the night. I witnessed a heavy display of police security in a large section of the city area and I found that this manner to try to execute a project is totally unacceptable.
This should not be a way to sort out our internal impasse.
I have been engaged in my work in Auroville for many years in the planning and development and I believe that the Crown is an important part of an innovative planning concept that still is not fully studied and understood. The Crown has been approved two times from the RA as a key element of the Galaxy and this should be considered by everybody. No individual or group alone has the right to consider themselves as representative of the community and we should be open if some sacrifice has to be made for the collective development.
I have been part of crown conversation for many years and this has been the first time where I saw some opening to dialogue by the representatives of the Youth Center and some forest group members. This has given the hope that a long standing controversy, lasting more than 20 years, when some of the present users of the YC were not yet born, could come to a constructive conclusion.
Unfortunately an hastened and abrupt communication, followed by police intervention, has put this process in jeopardy and inflicted a deep wound in our atmosphere.
At the moment of writing it seems that this episode will further deepen our divisions. With the optimism of the will, I still hope that we can find a way to de-escalate and take back the situation in our hands.
The Master Plan is a flexible tool that was envisaged as a participatory model as stated in its annexure 5. It cannot be enforced with an authoritative institutional approach, it is the common effort of all its citizens and each of them should be open to adjust his sectional and personal views in order to allow a larger collective manifestation.
The Master Plan is a flexible tool that was envisaged as a participatory model as stated in its annexure 5. It cannot be enforced with an authoritative institutional approach, it is the common effort of all its citizens and each of them should be open to adjust his sectional and personal views in order to allow a larger collective manifestation.
We have been called here to make an experiment to build a new society that will manifest in a city with a special character and we should make a leap forward in this direction. We should not allow the administrative rigidity that has been expressed on one side, nor the attachment to the status quo and the past or present reality which is often expressed in our community to prevent this. We need to make an effort to leap out of the present crisis. Only a growth in collective consciousness can help us in this direction and each one should do our best to build a different future for the project that we are called here to manifest not for ourselves, but for the future and the humanity as a whole.