TSA: What has your route been through the world?

Swen: Starting off from Germany, I travelled to Austria, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey. Then I entered Asia and visited Iraq, Iran, the Emirates and Oman before coming to India. In India, I started off in Goa, then travelled upwards to Mumbai and on to Delhi. Since then I have been travelling along the Ganga – Allahabad, Varanasi, Patna and now here I am in Bengal.

TSA: You are undertaking a tremendous journey – travelling around the world on just a bicycle. Here’s the most basic question – why?

Swen: A bicycle is the most flexible way to travel. The energy for propulsion is your own and there’s no boundary between you and reality. It’s not like sitting in a car, going to different countries and staying in hotel rooms. Also, a bicycle is small and light, which means that you can load it on a boat or an aeroplane and take it with you when the need arises.

TSA: Has such a need arisen, where you have had to travel by a different vehicle?

Swen: Yes, it has happened. I travelled by cycle all the way from Germany to Iraq, but couldn’t get into Iran. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs would only grant me a visa if I took a plane to fly into Iran. From Iran, I took a boat to Dubai. My original idea was to travel only by cycle, but it doesn’t exactly work out in Asia.

TSA: Is there any particular cause you want to promote or a message that you want to deliver through this journey?

Swen: Well, my intention is to get to understand the world better. It’s only when you visit different countries that you realise how little you actually know about the world. I wanted to experience different cultures, interact with the people and get to know various countries better. There are so many cultural differences everywhere that you need to go out there and see it all to try to understand it.

TSA: What is your usual agenda when you enter a new country; how do you explore it?

Swen: There’s not much that you have to do, you automatically meet new people. There’s a certain route that I take through each country and on the way, I meet lots of people. Then I interact with them and try to get to know them and the country in a better manner. Also, many countries have turned out to be a lot different from what I thought of them. When I started off in Germany, people told me to be careful in Muslim countries. But when I came to Muslim countries like Turkey and Iraq, I found the people to be really friendly. Many took me to their homes and offered me food and hospitality.

TSA: Experiences in India…

Swen: It was somewhat uncomfortable initially. Since I don’t stay in hotel rooms, I would often have to wash myself in public places. That’s when people would stand around me and start clicking pictures, which felt weird. But then, the more I got used to India, the better it became. People started opening up and becoming friendlier. I didn’t face any real difficulties in places about which I had been forewarned, such as Bihar, which I had been told was unsafe. On the contrary, the people turned out to be warm and receptive and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. You never know before you’re there.

TSA: Stay at IIT Kharagpur…

Swen: I came to know about IIT Kharagpur through couchsurfing.org - a website that allows people to offer an accommodation in their college campus. My host in Delhi studied here and invited me to come and stay here for a few days. The stay has been really nice and I have enjoyed interacting with a lot of students. The campus is beautiful and the ambience is relaxing. And it’s huge.

TSA: Where do you plan to take your cycle next?

Swen: Kolkata and then take a flight to Bangkok, because I wasn’t allowed to ride through Myanmar. I will meet a friend in Bangkok and travel for around 3 months. Then I’ll fly to Vietnam and explore the south-east Asian countries. It has been an adventurous 5 months so far.

TSA: What are your plans after completing the journey? 

Swen: I’ll take up a job after this, but not one where I have to work from 9 to 5 everyday and get financial satisfaction. I want to use the time for something that will be more useful and satisfying for me. I am still looking for opportunities to target once I reach home. I am not yet settled.

TSA: How would you want to be remembered by everyone after completing the journey?

Swen: To be honest I don’t feel special about it at all. I really feel that I am fortunate enough to belong to one of the richer parts of the world, due to which I could get the resources for this endeavour. There are many people who want to do the same thing, but do not have the opportunities and resources to fulfil their dream. I undertook this journey to get a better perspective of the world and people of different nationalities – an understanding untainted by the misrepresented information fed to us by the media. I want to convey that it is necessary to experience the reality before forming an opinion of it.

Vice President – Apoorv Jain
G Sec Social & Cultural – Darshak Bhagat, Dhatri Reddy
G Sec Technology – Ramendra Prasad, Himanshu Hitesh Das
G Sec Sports – Shrrinesh Bala, Abhishek Malhotra

The Scholars’ Avenue congratulates all of them on their victory, and we wish them all the very best for the year ahead.

For the final vote count, check out the image here.

Nipun Khemka

Apoorv Jain

Shrrinesh Balasubramanian

Abhishek Malhotra

Vaibhav Goyal

Dinesh Jangid

Harsh Bajaj

Ramendra Prasad

Himanshu Hitesh Das

Shahir Aziz

Umang Thareja

Dhatri Reddy

Darshak Bhagat

Rishav Ranjan

-OED

Yahoo’s renowned hackfest for students, Hack U, was conducted in the campus from  28 February to 3rd March. An extension of The Open Hack Day (an event run publicly by Yahoo! since 2006 which focuses on usage of the Yahoo! API to develop software), Hack U brings students together to brainstorm and develop innovative products for consumers. Apart from this, students also receive hacking tips from Yahoo’s web experts and get hands on experience with cutting edge technology.

This edition of Hack U kicked off with a keynote from Shouvick Mukherjee,  CEO and VP, Yahoo! India R&D. The next two days were packed with hacking sessions interspersed with small informative sessions in which students were taught about Yahoo’s various ‘hacks’ like BOSS  and Time Traveler.

In the end, out of the  record-breaking 67 hacks that were submitted and demonstrated , 3 hacks stood out and took away all the glory and the gold in the form of iPad Minis, Samsung Galaxies and 1 TB HDDs. The 1st Prize was one by  Team Visual Wiki which comprised of 3rd year students of the CSE department, viz. Vipul Jain, Nadeem Anjum, Saurabh Agrawal and Devender Bindal, who as their name suggested, built a Visual navigator for Wikipedia which according to them, ”filters the important pages connected to a particular topic and displays them in increasing order of importance and provides a gist of any arbitrary random topic under the sun.” Their reasoning behind this hack was the idea that human mind understands visuals better than a large text-linked Wikipedia hierarchy.

The runners up  - Rajanya Dhar, Sonam Kumari, Sunandita Patra, Anusha Suresh –  built a hack that would allow users to “Tweet to specific group by classifying them on basis of user’s choice”. The hack organizes a person’s Twitter followers into communities and assigns labels to these communities. This way a person can share certain tweets with only those group of followers who are interested in that information.

The third prize was claimed by Team Story Line consisting of Shrey Sharma, Vikas Sahu, Aayush Goel and Vinodh Kumar Sunkara whose hack helped users to “find out the story line of the most prominent events from the history ordered chronologically”.

The jubiliant winners with the HackU team

Part 1: I propose…

Singhi’s first proposal: Restructuring of the Open-IIT system and to make it more inclusive for all team sports

TSA: Till what extent do you think this was implemented?

Singhi: Every sport had an Open-IIT, including weightlifting. The rules were changed. My proposal of revamping the tournament structure was implemented. Till last year the Inter-IIT players didn’t play. But this year they did and in all the (team) sports. This way the juniors got an opportunity to practice with them.

Hatai’s first proposal: To create a website having facts and updates of all the players, in order to give them due recognition.

TSA: The website has obviously not been made. What are the reasons?

Hatai: The initial part was tough, wherein we had to collect data regarding all the inter-IIT players of Kharagpur. Since Gymkhana doesn’t document everything in the soft copy format, there is really no way of knowing who our players in the past years are. Even after collecting all the information, which we have done, the web-secretary is far too busy with other work to get this done. However, we believe that the web-site will be ready by the end of March.

Singhi’s second proposal: To hire a physiotherapist who could look into sports related injuries, and setting up of a sports Gym

TSA: Akash, even this has not been accomplished and Inter-IIT players are still at the mercy of the ludicrous services that BC Roy has to offer. Reasons?

Singhi: The estimated budget for the entire proposal, including salary for the physiotherapist, accommodation facilities and setting up of the gym. The proposal was shot down as we simply don’t have the money to fund it. Coming to problems about funding, you must realize that Gymkhana charges only 100 rupees per semester per student, which gives us a budget of approximately 15 lakhs.

TSA: But most other IITs have many superior sports facilities as compared to ours. How is it that we don’t?

Singhi: The budget allocation is different in other IITs. The fee structure of the TSG has not been changed for the last 15 years. For example, IIT Madras charges 200 rupees for gymkhana facilities every semester. There is a proposal to hike even our fee to the same amount in the next semester, and I am sure it will solve a lot of our current problems.

TSA: Okay, even if the said proposal was financially unviable, don’t you think that the candidates should find this out before publicizing it as their proposal?

Singhi: Yes, the main problem is that candidates can’t speak to the President of TSG before elections. So, he doesn’t have a very good idea of how things are going to be handled once he is elected. If candidates get to talk to him, they will be able to chalk out things better.

Hatai’s second proposal: To set up dressing room-cum-washrooms at all sporting regions within the campus.

TSA: Indranil, to what extent this proposal been implemented?

Hatai: Look, the sanction for any major construction activity requires the approval of a permanent Director. Since we had only an officiating Director for most of the year, a lot of what I proposed could not be implemented. However, some other things like the revamp of TSC, setting up of lights in both the football ground and the tennis courts is complete.

TSA: What do you think the new candidates should do? Should they focus on your incomplete proposals or do work on their own proposals?

Singhi: Although my tenure will officially end soon, I will continue to work on them. All that will be required is a little support from the new G.Secs. It will be slightly too much to expect that they will focus solely on our proposals.

TSA: Some of the proposals (like those of a new website) are being repeated year after year. What is your take on this?

Hatai: Proposals can be repeated year after year until they are cleared. My advice to our successors would be to have the proper motivation to work. They must be resourceful. I hope they continue the work we have begun, for example the Research Scholar Premier League.

Singhi: There is a new proposal of mine this year – To begin a tournament for all team sports on the lines of IPL. There will be virtual money given to team managers, who will be Post Graduate students.The auctioning and bidding will be in the Basketball court. This proposal will be incorporated with the Open-IIT and the process will begin on the 15th of March.

Part 2: Of Shaurya, Inter-IIT and GC brawls

TSA: Can you highlight an area where you have been successful as a Sports G.Sec?

Singhi: We were successful in hiring coaches for six sports that previously didn’t have them, namely squash, cricket, TT, volleyball, athletics and weight-lifting.

TSA: But many of the inter-IIT players complained that lack in permanency of the coaches was one of the major reasons of our poor performance.

Singhi: Yes. The cricket coach was available only during the weekends. The athletics coach conducted his training in sessions, while the TT coach came only before Shaurya. This was again because of lack of financial resources and the absence of a permanent director. The truth is, we just don’t have the money to appoint permanent coaches for all sports. However, the situation this year was better than last year.

TSA: Why is the attrition rate of our PTIs and coaches so high as compared to IITs?

Hatai: Frankly, it’s because most of the PTIs here at IIT Kharagpur are still languishing in Grade 2 Pay while their counterparts have been promoted to Grade 3 Pay in other IITs.

TSA: Coming to Shaurya, this year’s edition was a marked improvement from the last one. Can you highlight some areas which can be further improved?

Singhi: Yes, the glamour part of Shaurya has to be removed to focus on the Inter-IITs. The 3 day fest has to be converted into an at least 30-day sports meet with weekend matches. We should attract club teams to the fest and overall it should be made more professional.But removing the glamour will be detrimental to funding from sponsors. A balance has to be struck in this aspect. But then again, club teams would increase injuries and BC Roy presently doesn’t have enough facilities for such injuries. So a lot of things have to be considered before making any radical change.

TSA: Let’s talk about Inter-IIT. Do you think lack of continuous coaching is a major problem?

Singhi: Even though coaches were here since October, they were not permanent. This could have been an issue. The hiring of permanent staff isn’t in our hands. It is the Gymkhana’s responsibility. The main problem here is the dearth of resources to fund for senior-level coaches.

TSA: Players have voiced their disappointment over the travelling arrangements for Inter IIT. A sleeper class travel on a train with over 70 stops led to a long and tiring journey to Roorkee. Why was such a train chosen?

Hatai: The responsibility of planning and arranging for the travel lay with the officers and the coordinators. We weren’t made aware of their decision. The planning, however, was done well in advance.

TSA: According to you, what are the other problems that the Inter-IIT teams suffer from?

Singhi: There is definitely a lack of recognition from the institute. No incentives are given to the players for performing well. Sange Tenzin won Gold in Pole-Vault after a brilliant performance, but very few people are aware of it. I feel a player will lose motivation if he has to perform year after year without getting his fair share of recognition.Further, I feel players get over-confident before Inter-IIT after performing well in other tournaments like Shaurya. For instance, the Basket-ball team played extremely well against St.Xaviers, which is a good team, to bag Gold in Shaurya, but had a quarter-final exit in the Inter-IIT. Same goes for football. That is simply not acceptable. The Men’s Tennis team didn’t have any coach and yet they bagged a silver medal. It was a case of pure dedication. Other teams which had a coach from early October failed to perform. Somewhere you have to question the kind of attitude and motivation our Inter-IIT players have.

TSA: What about supporting the players with the desired equipment? We heard that rubbers were promised to the Table Tennis players but they finally had to acquire it on their own.

Hatai: The bills have been submitted but are still pending. The money will be reimbursed. It is in the Treasurer’s hands and not ours.

TSA: Let’s face it; the Sports GC hasn’t particularly been contested in a gentlemanly manner. There was a huge fight in two cricket matches, between Nehru-RK and Patel-RP. Why is it so difficult to control these matches?

Singhi: At the beginning of the GC itself, the Hall Presidents were told that any violence will not be tolerated and any indiscipline will result in bans being handed out. In the Nehru-RK match, it was the crowd which went out of control. The incident worsened when a PTI, who was trying to resolve the issue, got caught in the cross-fire instead. The Nehru cricket team has been banned as a result. A Disciplinary Committee has also been imposed on the students concerned.

TSA: What are the problems you both have faced with the administration?

Singhi: The biggest problem is that they don’t keep an inventory or a track of things. There are absolutely no contingent records. We had a case of an alumnus claiming to be the captain of an Inter-IIT team and requiring certain certificates. It could not be provided because there was no record. The future secretaries must keep soft-copies of all details and must maintain a proper inventory.

RK vs LBS:

One of the strongest contenders this year faces the surprise package of the tournament.  RK’s biggest weapon will be Satya Prakash, someone who has created havoc in most opposition flanks he has faced. Also considering Rohit Singh’s experience and Inderjeet Rawat’s deftness in the middle, LBS will find it very difficult to contain RK.

Nehru vs MMM:

Billed as The Match of the tournament, this contest will see Nehru, which has been the Mecca of football in KGP for quite some time now go up against arguably the best team in the tournament. With MMM boasting of a star-studded line up including several inter-IIT players like Haothang Baite and Chan Kasom among others, Nehru hall faces the prospect of bowing out of the competition at an early stage.

Azad vs LLR:

LLR, the reigning champions, have seen most of their star players graduate last year, and will have to rely on the strategic brilliance of their captain Akshay Kumar Lal. Azad, on the other hand, have emerged through a tough group with a brilliant comeback win over RP in their last group match, with a lot of credit going to their star goal-keeper Akshay Sharma. A very balanced tie, it should be interesting to see who proceeds in this half of the draw.

MS vs VS:

VS hall has done exceptionally well so far after topping their group and will like to continue the good work, but they face a resilient MS team. MS, which will be heavily dependent on the exploits of Shailesh Mohan in the midfield, will have to find a way to contain Pawan, VS hall’s speedy striker.