Special Guest Article: The Bridge called PGs
Sajid, the GS Cult, talks about the participation of PGs in Institute Cultural activities
Status Quo
From the institute standpoint, Cultural Activities are promoted for the students’ personality development, for developing a competitive spirit and most of all, for fostering creativity. This might seem as banal as it sounds, but the effects of an overall education and personality are clearly seen when Companies and Universities consider your participation in cultural activities as a resume ‘spike’, or when you’re having a coffee table conversation with your internship boss about your prowess, or when you have to choose between two equally unpalatable situations in life, or when you ‘score’ at major college competitions around the city! You might want to take a look at our distinguished alumni-role-models, there was definitely something common among Rajat Gupta , Shashi Tharoor, Manohar Parrikar and Arun Sarin that made them what they are today.
A famous Post Graduate IITian once said, “In God we trust, everybody else must bring data to the table”. I present to you my bit of hypothesis driven stats. 3300 students out of 5600 enrolled students in IIT comprise the PG population, that’s about 60 % of the entire Institute. This obviously means that, if the PGs have successfully recognized the importance of participating in cultural activities, there would be proportionately 60% of PG population in the Cult activities. But clearly, the charts below don’t seem to show so:
The Reasons
For the sake of simplicity, we consider H1, H11, H12, Tansa as Cluster A and rest of the hostels as Cluster B. Thanks for bearing with the euphemisms. Starting with the foremost problem: Time – Majority of the PGs are enrolled in a master’s programme, in which they have two years of stay. The first year is spent trying to understand the IIT system, and the second is spent with their projects. With PhDs, the story is entirely different. They are involved with their research groups, RA-ship, and spend most of their time in their hostel communities, where they actually tend to develop interest in a particular activity, only to be shattered by the baccha UG domination of most institute clubs and activities. Awareness: If you’re a PG, you would yourself raise your eyebrow if I told you the institute has a Video Camera which can be issued on your I-card! This is just the tip of the iceberg that consists of other happenings like workshops, shows, competitions, inter-college fests, PAFs and the breeding grounds for them all – the clubs. Hostel distribution: In the first year, PGs enter a Cluster B hostel and in the next, they are most likely in Cluster A. This results in sporadic talent allocation in the Cluster A hostels which renders them with the least time possible in nurturing talent within the given span, while Cluster B hostels gladly spend 4 years in sending their most refined entries for the GCs. Now considering all this as a Bayesian prior in our estimation of ‘how many PGs ought to be participating in extra-curricular activities’, we are still short of the required numbers.
Enter the IITs
IITs are the only institutes, and mind you, if you’re a wary PG from another institute, you’ll know I’m nailing it when I say that the IITs are the only institutes which foster the growth and proliferation of activities which are not academic. The amount of resources, facilities, work-force and dedication IIT devotes to the extra-curriculars spans right from the 30% of UG students occupying non-academic organizational posts to the annual 6 figure amount it spends on us. Why is all this being done? Was the success of debaters like Rajat Gupta, quizzers like Shashi Tharoor and performers like Arun Sarin not attributed to the IITs’ lush environment?
Solutions
To tactfully promote participation from PGs in GC events, there were three major measures taken which are as follows. Hostels 1, 11, 12 and Tansa hardly get time to prepare with their hectic schedules, and their residents hardly stay for 2 years (or are shifted from other hostels into theirs for just one year) leaving them in a disadvantageous position inherently. For this, the Overall GC Trophy is now divided into Overall Trophy for Cluster A and Overall Trophy for Cluster B, resulting in ‘like hostels’ getting their bit of fair competition and retaining the motivation to fight for something foreseeable rather than against an inherent handicap. The second measure: one week before any GC event, the respective club must conduct a workshop for the same in any one PG hostel. The third measure: separate orientations for the inmates of selected PG hostels were conducted to brief them about activities in the institute.
Current Scene among the PGs
In Surbahaar this year, out of all the participants more then 50% were PGs. 80 out of 250 students registered with the Institute Dance and Music classes are PGs. In the Institute Debating league, the PGs are leading in both the groups. Gyrations and Street-Play saw a decent performance this year not only from Hostel 11 but also from Hostel 12 and Tansa House. Fine arts has seen a tremendous increase in participation in the Fabric Painting Fine Arts GC and workshops from PGs. The students of Hostel 12 successfully organized a highly appreciated Art Festival. In the PG Cultural Database, a mailing list of more than 500 interested PGs is maintained.
End Notes
Well having said this, it doesn’t look as alarming as the graph did, but it’s a definite indication that the PGs have started becoming conscious of the opportunities that are provided by the Institute, and are at a stage where they need to be taking full advantage of the current system and exploit the resources provided. It’s a time when the PGs ought to be exploring tangential options, exhibiting their acquired skill and sharing their knowledge with the rest of us. For all you know, tomorrow, you might find a stage exclusively for yourselves, a stage where you have the spotlight on yourself and the ability to create the difference. The same stage where one might believe, people like Rajat Gupta, Arun Sarin , and Manohar Parrikar all had a common virtue. We would be obliged to have you on board for otherwise, we will never be able to cross that bridge.
Insight is going to have a discussion with Institute PG representatives (the video will be on our site next week) to deal more thoroughly with the issue of PG participation.
