Sarkar's formula — atma moksartham jagat hitaya ca, for one's own liberation and for the welfare of the world — is built into the structure rather than recommended. Ananda Marga's monks and nuns are not contemplatives: each is posted to run a school, a children's home, a clinic or a relief unit, and the movement's service arm has worked in famines, cyclones and earthquakes across South Asia for sixty years. Margiis are expected to give a share of income and time. The organisation resists being read as either a meditation group with charitable activities or a charity with a meditation habit, and its literature returns to the point constantly.