Many organizations and individuals are working independently to make Pondicherry a special place. Working together, we can have a more effective and holistic impact.
A meeting will be held at 10:30am on 4 February 2007 at the Golden Chain Office, 2 Rue de la Compagne to discuss the formation of a consortium. The agenda will be:
- To finalize the mission statement and objectives of this consortium.
- Come up with a name for the consortium.
- To enumerate what makes Pondicherry unique.
- To prepare a list of organizations and individuals to be a part of this group.
Some preliminary ideas which could form the basis for the discussion are as follows:
Mission statement: To work as a group to preserve and enhance the unique quality of life of Pondicherry.
Name of the consortium: Beautiful Pondicherry Consortium.
Some ideas on what makes Pondicherry unique:
- Heritage
- Small town feeling with city infrastructure
- International and multicultural residents
- Religious harmony
- Spiritual center
- Peaceful Surroundings
All these factors give Pondicherry a special ambiance that draws and keeps people here.
Let’s all collaborate for a Beautiful Pondicherry!
Good luck everyone – wish Mark and I could be there with you, but we will be in Varanasi at the International AIDS conference. Hope to see some great results when we get back to “Beautiful Pondicherry”.
Best of luck to all ! Its a tough task you have ahead… but please don’t give up… Pondy surely needs all the help it can get…
Dear All,
I attended the meeting of 4th Feb.2007 and would like to share with all the salient points that came up for discussion during the meeting:
We generally agreed that the aim of the Consortium is to preserve the uniqueness of Puducherry and to create conditions for its growth in the right direction. The Mission statement was “to work as a group to preserve and enhance the unique quality of life of Puducherry”.
It was pointed out in the meeting that, among other things, the Govt. has taken up the promotion of tourism in a big way and all who are concerned about the wellbeing of Puducherry must take initiative so that tourism falls into its right place. In order to come out with an action plan, we need to focus first on a few things at a time, keeping the vision of a beautiful Puducherry in tact.
It is the people who contribute towards making Puducherry a better place or worse, and so we need to identify the type (the word “type” is used in its broadest sense) of people who make it better or worse. We need to group together people/organisations that are willing to make Puducherry a better place, and we need to identify the type of people who make it worse and who should be made more aware of how to make Puducherry a better place. Finally, for more focussed initial action, we need to identify a few places in Puducherry where we can try out things that the Consortium decides to do.
One of the first works will be, of course, to consolidate the Consortium itself on a functional level, for which these meetings are of a great help. A few more meetings will be needed to get it on a working mode. We also need to ‘name’ the Consortium.
In my next posting, I would like to express my ideas on how we can initiate this movement.
- Shivakumar
Hi!
This is in continuation of my earlier posting.
Though there are several qualities that make Puducherry special, its uniqueness lies in its spiritual heritage. Our mode of work shall be based on this high spiritual vision that regards Puducherry as a living organism that must be helped to evolve in the right direction.
A suggested initial work that we need to do, besides strengthening the nucleus which is this Consortium, is:
1. to identify the people who are likely to influence adversely / those who need to be made more aware, in making Puducherry a better place
– visitors who come through guided tours conducted by several Tour Agencies
– visitors from abroad, as tourists
– visitors from outside Puducherry but from within India
– visitors who come specifically for the Ashram and places related to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother
– in-city people, people who live here
– in-city beggars, road-side dwellers for whom the roadside is their house, vendors etc.
2. to group together people and organisations that are willing or already working in bettering Puducherry.
3. to choose, first, a few places in Puducherry to focus our attention, so that we can study these places in terms of
– the infrastructure needed to maintain the place
– to think of the ways & means to create awareness among people who visit this place
– to have a group of people (law enforcement / employees / voluntary workers) who can enforce the decorum of the place etc.
– other things that are peculiar to that place
a suggested list of places for initial study & action are: Beach Road, Municipal Park, Ashram area.
That’s all for the moment!
Let’s start pooling in our suggestions to clarify our vision & ideas for action.
- Shivakumar