Over the last one year I have talked to different people in NIT Trichy on topics ranging from the issues with the mess to research culture in the institute. Today I had an interesting chat with Vij KUmz about Festember.
It seems Festember was started somewhere in mid 1970s and had gained popularity far and wide in the subsequent years. It was the turning point in the career of famous singer Unnikrishnan who decided to choose music over cricket after winnning the singing competition in FEstember.
The most important feature of Festember it seems was the marketing team! VIj KUmz says the students were awarded bonus points for actually going out of the college for finalising marketing deals for Pragyan ... err.. Festember!
An idea, such brilliantly conceived to hone the soft skills of RECTians could not have come but from the man who was responsible for its establishment and growth- Prof. Mani Sundaram. Afterall he is the person who made cigarettes a part of the daily mess menu to ensure that smoking is regulated among the students!
Today, we do marketing of Pragyan and Festember in the dark without the knowledge and approval of the faculty. In a world where everything from blogs to sports tournaments are marketed and ´corporatised´ Festember and Pragyan are forced to keep themselves to NITT (at least officially) !
So where did things go wrong? According to KUmz somewhere in the mid 90s, one of the faculty advisors of Festmber failed to check the money embezzlement done by the then Chairman and all the marketing deals collapsed! Naturally this affected the reputation of the college and the admin felt betrayed of their trust in the students.
This made the college admin turn strictly against marketing and I must admit we still suffer a lot because of this incident. Had the tradition continued I am sure Festember and Pragyan would have scaled much greater heights!
It seems Festember was started somewhere in mid 1970s and had gained popularity far and wide in the subsequent years. It was the turning point in the career of famous singer Unnikrishnan who decided to choose music over cricket after winnning the singing competition in FEstember.
The most important feature of Festember it seems was the marketing team! VIj KUmz says the students were awarded bonus points for actually going out of the college for finalising marketing deals for Pragyan ... err.. Festember!
An idea, such brilliantly conceived to hone the soft skills of RECTians could not have come but from the man who was responsible for its establishment and growth- Prof. Mani Sundaram. Afterall he is the person who made cigarettes a part of the daily mess menu to ensure that smoking is regulated among the students!
Today, we do marketing of Pragyan and Festember in the dark without the knowledge and approval of the faculty. In a world where everything from blogs to sports tournaments are marketed and ´corporatised´ Festember and Pragyan are forced to keep themselves to NITT (at least officially) !
So where did things go wrong? According to KUmz somewhere in the mid 90s, one of the faculty advisors of Festmber failed to check the money embezzlement done by the then Chairman and all the marketing deals collapsed! Naturally this affected the reputation of the college and the admin felt betrayed of their trust in the students.
This made the college admin turn strictly against marketing and I must admit we still suffer a lot because of this incident. Had the tradition continued I am sure Festember and Pragyan would have scaled much greater heights!
is this a personal opinion or official version???
ReplyDeleteI doubt if there is any official version of it. Most of it is what my friend Vijay KUmar told me from what he heard from his faculty and seniors in college, and the rest of it is out of my personal experience working for Pragyan and Festember.
ReplyDelete@shyam found out anything about this at GAM? from past batches?
ReplyDelete