Which town?

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The Government of the Republic of India chose to open the country to the laws and forces of the world market : an opening it wished to be measured and prudent, but which nonetheless generated its own momentum. From a regime of socialist allegiance – there was still practically but one model of automobile on the pot-holed roads -, the economy was rapidly lifted to other levels of “development”, a sudden crossing of limits without any prior social, psychological or administrative preparation.

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In the span of a single generation the world population, and that of India in particular, doubled and an altogether other mode of society rushed into every home and hearth. A new middle class was born and proliferated, urbanized and emancipated itself from the constraints of caste and social origin while gaining access to a dreamlike material prosperity.

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On the territory of Her town, the community constantly strove to acquire a coherence that yet escaped on all sides – this was not an ashram or a monastery, nor was it a forest commune, but a collectivity in flux having as its task to build while walking, to create while moving forward = a new city, a new society, a new human view of the earth.

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