Many small ‘business’ activities operate in Auroville, such as sexual health education services and youth empowerment activities, which typically generate less than 2-3 lakh rupees annually. These business activities are not geared towards profit maximization, on the contrary, the people running these activities simply try to serve the community by generating abundance in non-monetary terms. Such activities are central to Auroville’s experimentation in an alternative economy where money is no longer the sovereign lord.
Unfortunately, the illegitimate FAMC (see earlier posts) does not seem to recognise these values. In fact, they recommend closing all small business activities in Auroville. In an email sent to all small business activities in Auroville on February 9th, the illegitimate FAMC mentions “poor turnover”, “we advise you to increase your turnover” and “if you do not intend to develop your activity we suggest you close down your activity” and “To continue, kindly provide us with appropriate reasons for not expanding..”.
After the above-mentioned email was sent out, several small business activities received another email from their Umbrella trust stating that their business activity would be shut down on the 31st of March as per the FAMC recommendations.
The forced closing of all small business activities in Auroville is highly unethical and a major breach of trust. It would result in the loss of a large part of Auroville’s unique ability to sustain livelihoods while providing valuable services to the community. Most importantly, small business activities have the right to exist! Auroville is not about creating large businesses with big turnovers! The illegitimate FAMC clearly lacks this fundamental understanding and as residents of Auroville, we condemn their highly inadequate management practices and authoritarian behaviour.