News & Notes 915:About the RAD on the Working Committee
About the RAD on the Entity::Working Committee
Dear community members, following the events that occurred in the beginning of December 2021, three RAD petitions have been submitted to the RAS. These three petitions asked for the community to come together on the following topics: (a) pausing development work on the Crown; (b) a vote of no confidence and new selection of the Working Committee; and (c) addressing the ATDC selection / membership situation. The RAD on pausing development work on the Crown ended on the 26th of January 2022, but the two remaining RADs are still to be held.
These were not taken up straight away as there was a large number of pending RAD petitions. How to prioritise these was an issue that the Auroville Council needed to address. They recently held a community poll to prioritise these pending RADs. Since the overwhelming majority of the poll participants have selected the RAD on the Working Committee as their top priority, and this has been considered by the AVC & RAS, the petitioners’ coordination team for this RAD met the RAS to launch the process. Information will be published soon, including translations into Tamil and French.
The full RAD process includes a minimum of 2 meetings in which we, as a community, come together to hear all sides of the issue and gather feedback on the voting options proposed by the petitioners. Since this entails quite a lot of work, the official petitioner representatives for this RAD (Lakshmi and Sandeep), are supported by a team of coordinators who will assist them and the RAS in preparing the RA Meetings, dealing with feedback integration, etc. This petitioners’ coordination team is composed of two members of the previous team (Dinagar and Suryamayi) as well as two new members (Divya L. and Henrike), and is assisted by additional resource persons.
All members of the petitioners’ coordination team are committed to uphold the RAD process with fairness and transparency. They have offered their support to this process with the intention to foster a healthy functioning of an active Residents’ Assembly, which by extension includes an operational Working Committee.
We hope for a collaborative way forward, and aspire to healing and building trust once more.
In community,
Lakshmi and Sandeep (Petitioner representatives),
Dinagar, Divya L, Henrike, Suryamayi (Petitioners’ coordination team)
Short overview on the concerns of the petitioners for the RAD petition
“Vote of no confidence in/call for a new selection of the current Working Committee team, given their failure to ‘assist’ and ‘represent’ the Residents’ Assembly as stated in their mandate.”
The Working Committee of the Residents’ Assembly is one of the main organisational bodies of Auroville. According to its mandate, it is supposed to “Represent the Residents’ Assembly in interactions with the Governing Board, International Advisory Council and the Secretary of the Auroville Foundation [...].” However, recently some members of the Working Committee have actively rejected and denied the position of the Residents’ Assembly as a decision-making body before the Governing Board and Secretary – while they were chosen by the Residents’ Assembly to represent it.
According to the Auroville Foundation Act 1988, The Residents’ Assembly has the authority to choose members of the Working Committee, and how long they are to serve in this role. The petitioners who have asked for this RAD feel that it is especially important in the present context that the Working Committee represent the Residents’ Assembly before the Governing Board and Secretary of the Auroville Foundation.
Other key issues with the current Working Committee noted by the petitioners are:
- The Working Committee did not provide assistance to the Residents’ Assembly to come to an agreement on a divisive topic (the development of the Crown).
- The Working Committee did not adequately inform the Governing Board of the views of the Residents’ Assembly.
- The Working Committee did not adequately inform the community about the Multiversity proposal nor obtain the agreement of the Residents’ Assembly.
- The Working Committee did not deliver a proposed Residents’ Assembly selection process for the ATDC.
- Some Working Committee members, despite being present, did not try to prevent or halt violent actions on the Crown in early December 2021.
For these reasons, the petitioners, lacking confidence in members of the Working Committee, have called for these meetings. The Residents’ Assembly is to come together and decide on a way forward towards the constitution of a Working Committee that is able to represent the Residents’ Assembly as we work together towards realising the Mother’s Dream and the Auroville Charter.
More information on each of these issues is in the extensive background document, which will be sent to you by email together with the invitation to the first RA Meeting on this topic.
If you have any questions, please write to us at dec2021rads (at) auroville.org.in
Translations in Tamil and French can be found on Auronet.