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There are several reasons why we felt that any increase ought to be done through
services and not in cash. To appreciate these reasons, we must go back a little
ways.
1-
Over the years the term “Aurovilian”, from being charged with the
unique challenge of adventure, progress and change; has gradually
come to represent a status, almost a caste, with its own “sub-castes”.
As is always the case naturally with any status, those who enjoy it will
tend to make sure that it is inviolable.
2-
It is a fact of Auroville that, by and large, very few of its residents are
available for full-time physical work.
3-
Since the time our team took up the coordination of the work at
Matrimandir, it has been our perception that our mandate and our
task were to see the whole of Matrimandir completed as soon as
possible, within the guidelines of Auroville.
4-
It is another fact of Auroville that, being situated in contemporary
South India, it is not in position to make use of sophisticated
machinery and equipment for any construction purposes, while
virtually every adult person living near to Auroville must earn daily
wages in order to survive.
5-
There was always a “labour force” at Matrimandir, even through the
lean years when only one main work was in progress, such as the
erection of the space frame or, later, the laying of the marble in the
Inner Chamber. But when the time came to look at the completion of
the whole of Matrimandir – the two shells of the sphere, the Air
Conditioning System, the entire interior, the underground areas, the
whole infrastructure, the 12 large Petals and the 12 small petals, the
Inner Gardens, the amphitheatre and the Park or Outer Gardens and
its water bodies – it became obvious that we had to organise
ourselves so as to receive the help of many more “workers”.
6-
At present there are more than 400 people working at Matrimandir,
who hail from the neighbouring villages. They work for their livelihood,
but they also work for Matrimandir itself and a number of them are
manifesting a degree of commitment and care truly remarkable by all
standards.
7-
On the other hand several individuals who hail from the same
background, who are sometimes even blood relatives to these men
and women, have at various times become “Aurovilians”; among
those, some were “workers” earlier and continued working at
Matrimandir, albeit at a different pace and with somewhat different
implications, while others have joined the work at Matrimandir after
becoming “Aurovilians”.
8-
Given the complex and diverse nature of the work and the centrality
of its purpose at all levels, given also that at the best of times there
can only be a tentative planning, as its progress depends entirely on
the flow of donations, the daily context of activity is naturally more
loosely structured than in any specifically oriented service unit or any
productive unit where it is generally accepted that a hierarchy and a
strict discipline are a necessity.
9-
It has thus been one of the most blatant contradictions surrounding
the emergence of Matrimandir that, too often, on the part of those
who being “Aurovilians” are expected to manifest the clearest sense of