journal d'une transition

1057

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