Through my own journey as an activist over the past two decades, in my attempt to understand the nature of our civilisational crisis, I had arrived at exactly these ideals. So had our Study Circle members. These, along with the larger vision of Auroville which aspires for human unity and Integral Yoga (bringing together matter and spirit) had drawn us here. Like us, since its founding 50 years ago, several Aurovilians have gathered here from different cultures, inspired by these founding economic principles, have experimented with various modes of economic organisation and practices, attempting to create a trust-based, collaborative economy. Here are a few that we found to be the most significant among them all:

1. Ownership

There is no private property in Auroville: land, all immovable assets (including homes), and community enterprises are owned by the collective. Aurovilians may be stewards of an Auroville home, but they cannot sell it (even if they have financed it) or even bequeath it; they can only exchange it for another housing asset within Auroville. Similarly, there are no owners of Auroville enterprises. Even those who have set them up, and usually invested the start-up capital, are only executive managers. They cannot sell the enterprise, neither to another Aurovilian, nor to a non-Aurovilian. If they choose to step down, a community body called the Funds and Assets Management Committee (FAMC), approves new executives. Some enterprises are run by a small team of executive managers, while others work along the principles of a co-operative. For example, the Auroville Arts Service is an co-operative of 67 Auroville artists, through which they sell their artwork, and contribute to the service on a voluntary basis.  

2. Forms of sharing 

Community Funds: Income-generating enterprises fund a communal budget, which is allocated across various ‘service’ sectors of the community (farms & forest, health, education, arts, municipal services, etc.) by a group of their representatives. This developed from the Envelopes system through which funds were distributed in the earlier years of the community, when there were very few community services. Representatives of different settlements within Auroville placed their needs in regular community meetings, and disbursements were made through a collective process. The communal budget also funds Maintenances, monthly financial and in-kind support for Aurovilians (awarded on the basis of their workplace and their level of need).

• Common Accounts: in Auroville there have been many experiments (some abandoned, some continuing till date) with common accounts, such as The Circles experiment, a large-scale community mobilisation in the early 2000s to encourage many members of the community to participate in collective accounts projects, based on the success of a couple of previous experiments (Seed and the Common Account).  Each collective accounts project group decides its own principle of functioning. While many have failed or have been disbanded for various reasons, some collective accounts projects last to this day. This active experimentation has provided for a valuable natural learning experience. Some of the successful projects that pool member contributions are Nandini (a clothing and tailoring service), and the Pour Tous Distribution Centre (PTDC), an internal distribution centre primarily for food. Collective contributions meet the cost of operations, irrespective of individual members consumption and payment, and there are no prices on products, encouraging members to take what they need. There is a periodic reconciliation that shows both the contribution and consumption allowing for the member to re-adjust subsequent contributions or initiate a conversation that allows for them to share their monetary ability. 
• Sadhana Forest, Pitchandikulam Forest, Botanical Gardens, Pavilion of Tibetan Culture and Sacred Groves are communities and projects that have extensively embodied various forms of gift culture, freely sharing knowledge and resources, relying on donations made by well-wishers and their own income-generating activities, from both outside donors (in the form of money) or internally among members of Auroville who share other forms of wealth.

3. Forms of exchange: 

•  In AuroOrchard, a farm that supplies fresh produce to many communities and eateries, labour can be exchanged for fresh produce. 

• Aura, an online marketplace where needs and offers are exchanged, is in its experimental phase. It attempts to bring together the idea of Universal Basic Income and alternative currency. 

4. Forms of wealth

Instead of a universal basic income, there has been an attempt towards realising universal basic services in the following forms:

• • Natural wealth: Auroville’s land itself is a huge source of natural wealth. From the early years, community members have invested in what is today exemplary environmental restoration through afforestation and water conservation, reviving a once barren landscape. Projects like the Auroville Botanical Gardens and forest communities like Pitchandikulam preserve and propagate valuable vegetation and disseminate knowledge about how they can be used for human wellbeing. Roots is an initiative that helps residents to rely on the natural wealth of Auroville through forest walks to identify wild edibles, forest foraging and gleaning sessions, workshops on making cleaners like tooth powders and bio-enzymes using locally available natural materials, etc.

• • Knowledge wealth: Access to schools is free for all the resident children. Auroville is a place with an abundance of learning opportunities for children and adults with workshops on arts and craft, music, theatre, movement, facilitation, healing, yoga offered throughout the year.  Many of these are subsidised by the communal fund, offered in the spirit of gift, or for a voluntary contribution. 

• • Material wealth: Auroville has a Free Store, where residents offer items that they have in excess of their need – clothes, footwear, crockery, books, toys, accessories, etc., and anyone can take these for free. A-LoT (A Library of Things) is a place where things could be donated / lent to and borrowed from.  

• • Social wealth: Opportunities to participate in weekly potlucks (or eat daily at Auroville’s community canteen, The Solar Kitchen), community gatherings, workshops and governance processes (in various flavours) abound across Auroville. While the Resident Assembly Service (RAS) attempts to involve the residents in governance, experiments like Integral Entrepreneurship Lab (IEL) attempt to tap into the collective wisdom and wealth to build synergies. Spaces like Youth Centre and Youth Link enable youth to connect with each other and express their imagination and creativity.

• • Spiritual wealth: There are plentiful opportunities for spiritual nourishment and growth, from quiet time in nature to meditation halls, healing spaces, nonviolent communication practice groups, discourses and workshops on Integral Yoga.

• • Health wealth: Quiet Healing Centre and Verité offer free services to Aurovilians, and finance their operations from the income generated through service to the guests and the Auroville Health Fund Insurance Scheme. Pitanga offerings are subsidised by Auroville’s communal fund. Many individual healers working independently from these centres offer their services to Aurovilians on a gift basis as well. 

• • Cultural wealth: One of ‘The Dream’ statements says “Beauty in all its artistic forms, painting, sculpture, music, literature, would be equally accessible to all”. Auroville offers abundant opportunities to access this form of wealth with the experiment being located in the rich soil of ancient Tamil culture, the active engagement of people from 56 countries and through various countries / cultures having their own Pavilion that showcase the offerings from that region. All performances and cultural events, including daily film-screenings are open to all residents and visiting guests alike; free of cost, many paid for by the communal fund.

• • Financial wealth: Auroville generates financial wealth through its income-generating enterprises (within Auroville for residents at a discount, or for guests and visitors, and outside supplying  to shops and boutiques); receives recurring government grants for educational research, donations from individuals (Aurovilian and non-Aurovilian), foundations (such as the Foundation for World Education, and Stichting de Zaaier), or CSR funds for specific community projects. 

Gaps & Challenges

Auroville is a unique experiment in that it is among a very few places in the world, where people from so many different cultures have attempted to live together in such numbers on such a large land area, and managed to sustain it beyond five decades; and all this in the spirit of co-creation without the direct instructions of any single leader or ‘Guru’. The Mother’s vision statements are treated mostly as guidelines that are constantly revisited in order to see what they might look like in practice in the present context. While this does make Auroville very welcoming of new social experiments, and while we do have such a wide variety of economic experiments that have been made over the past many decades, in an overall sense, the discourse and form are very far from being radically different from what one sees in the world outside. And here are some reasons for why it might be so.

• The economy is almost entirely based on money, apart from the monthly ‘maintenances’ offered to Aurovilians, which are offered partly in kind. 
• Studies say that only 15% of the food needs of Auroville are being met by what is grown locally. The situation is similar in the case of other common products made here like soaps. 
• Though the monthly financial and in-kind support is sufficient for a simple lifestyle within Auroville, it is hard to accommodate financial savings or other kinds of expansions in one’s life, including visiting families in one’s home country.
• Though there might be some evaluation of economic initiatives, there isn’t a process to continually assess whether and how these are engaging with Auroville’s economic ideals, in order to inform and encourage future practices. Review of commercial units is restricted to mainly mainstream metrics and financial returns. When compared to fields such as art, farming, healing and design, there is relatively little research, experimentation and documentation that happens in the field of alternative business and economics. 
• Commercial units hardly interact, share resources or work towards building synergies, while the possibilities of doing so given the proximity of the units and the shared values, are enormous.
• Much of what is being offered without a cost or on the basis of gift is often cross-subsidised by charging the guests and visitors to Auroville a high price. This leads to perceived elitism and economic exploitation by the businesses in Auroville.
• Since the Auroville economy still deals with mainstream currency (rupee) as its primary mode of exchange, the investments are being made in global banks contributing to and strengthening the larger exploitative financial system which is embedded within the idea of debt and scarcity. The economy still relies on grants from the Indian Government and international donors.
• The local villagers are still largely employees of various commercial units within Auroville, although exceptional ones are actively co-shaping the larger experiment and discourse within. 

And there are a number of challenges that come in the way of reimagining and taking decisive steps forward in the direction of our ideals. 

• Lofty ideals can be a blessing and a burden, simultaneously. They are a blessing when they serve as an anchorage and a reference point. They turn into a burden when they set us up for failure and endless self-criticism. The feeling that nothing-but-perfection-is-good-enough creates an unhealthy atmosphere of insufficiency, and sometimes inertia.
• This being a melting pot of many world cultures and the local village culture added to the mix, there are various perspectives that need to dialogue with each other in order to arrive at any consensus. This makes decision-making often a long-drawn process, coming in the way of taking decisive steps forward. 
• Attempts to build and maintain bridges with like-minded groups outside are few and far between. Apart from personal connections, there is a rudimentary contact with academics studying alternative economy models. Information is not very systematically shared, stored and used. 
• Though, of late, structured programs are being offered to bring new members up to speed with the intricacies of the Auroville model, there is still a long way to go towards enabling smooth entry into the often confusing and contradictory reality. 

While there are more details and nuances to these gaps and challenges, when such chaos and pluriformity can be embraced with curiosity and acceptance, they transform into a rich field for study and experimentation, both of the system and of the self. Through our study, we collectively arrived at what we call ‘The Integral Economic’ model.