The Big Fight The battle of the Fests
Two totally different programs with different tastes, but unfortunately there is only one TV set in most homes, and thus each had to pull off a gimmick to pull the audience to itself.
I bet there is one more conflict every Kgpian is thinking of right now, SF and Kshitij. Two totally different fests with different tastes, but at the end of the year only one will be called the better of the two.
Kgp population is as, if not more, demanding as the Indian TV viewer. The slightest goof up in a fest and it will go down in history as a makahu. That put together with two very passionate teams, putting in continuous nights in the Gymkhana, is a potentially explosive mix.
Attack at the other team ranges from harmless jibes to actual cloak and dagger tactics. Pulling off a sponsor from the other side into one’s own is looked at as an achievement.
The major fighting arena is the sponsorship rink. The simple reason being that there are only so many of them to go around, and very few are wont to cough up money for both the fests. The amount of sponsorship is of course one major indicator of the scale of the fest.
There have been reports of one sabotaging the other’s chances by calling it a “sirf naach ganaa affair”, or a “non entity with only a token participation from outside kgp”. Joint attempts have not shown a good track record as organizing team members show high levels of suspicion bordering on paranoia, leading to joint deals more often than not falling through. The situation in recent past was interpreted by a sponsoring company as the fight between two student “unions”.
There have been instances where negative publicity was done in outside colleges, the logic was if someone doesn’t come to kgp for one he will for the other, as nobody will come here twice. In worse times, there have been instances of one tearing out the publicity material of the other.
Vice Presidents in the past years have made attempts to keep such in fighting between two Gymkhana bodies at bay, but this requires a complete change of mindset rather than attempts by any single person.
The process of induction of Kshitij into the Kgp system is still underway and there will be teething problems and occasional spats. But there is a change of mindset required from both the organizing team as well as the junta. Advantages can be drawn out from the competitive environment, each tries desperately to out do the other and this will only lead to both the fests becoming big on a national scale, but this competition is not war, and rules need to be imposed. No logic should justify painting a sister organization in bad light.
