Spring Fest
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Spring Fest, popularly known as SF, is the annual socio-cultural festival held at Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur during the month of January in the spring semester. The Spring Fest is held for 4 nights and 3 days on the weekend closest to 26th January, India's Republic Day.
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[edit] Activities
During the fest, students from IIT Kharagpur and from different colleges all over the country participate in a plethora of socio-cultural activities. Most of these are day events which involve dramatics, music and dance competitions, fine-arts contests, quizzes, and other literary events. Other non-competition based events include Star-Talk which involves talks/conferences by eminent personalities from a variety of fields. The number of these events is particularly large and serves to cater to the large number of participants — both local as well as from other colleges.
There are other "just-for-kicks" events that are kept on running throughout the day and usually provide entertainment to the partcipants in-between the main events. Some of these events, such as "Perpendiculars" (which runs throughout the 4 days), are so popular that they are able to attract students away from the main events.
[edit] Star Nites
The evenings are notable for "Star-Nites" — the biggest events in Spring Fest which usually involve live concerts by some of the most famous musicians and bands in South Asia. The genres of music are wide and varied and involve pop, rock and fusion bands. The usual venue for these events is the Tagore Open Air Theater (TOAT) which usually gets packed to its full capacity during the "Star-Nites" as the students, faculty members and the assistant staff turn up in huge numbers to see the shows. The security for these events is very tight and is managed by the students themselves. For latecomers, it is usually impossible to get a seat inside TOAT and sights such as students hanging on tree branches and on the high TOAT walls to catch a glimpse of the concert are not uncommon. These are some of the biggest concerts in Eastern India and attract a huge number of non-IIT Kharagpur students as well. Famous Indian artistes like S. P. Balasubramaniam, Shaan, Sunidhi Chauhan, Shankar Mahadevan and classical performers such as Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia, L. Sriram, Pandit Vishwa Mohan Bhatt have performed here. Bands like Euphoria, Indian Ocean, Strings etc. have also been performing here.
[edit] Other notable events
Other events include the annual fashion parade which includes apparel designs by the students of the participating colleges. This event also attracts a large audience and has been a cause for concern in the past when some of the designs were a bit too revealing compared to Indian norms. Also featured is Indian classical music in the form of some event during the four days. SF has traditionally been started off with a live concert by IIT Kharagpur's own eastern musical group — the Eastern Technology Musical Society (ETMS). This event is held in the Netaji Auditorium (IIT Kharagpur's main indoor auditorium), and being the first event of SF, is very popular.
A notable event is Wildfire which involves a competition between rock bands from various colleges. The event culminates in the finalists playing in an all-out live concert on the last night of SF. Another such event for fans of Indian music is Sargam.
[edit] Organization
SF is notable for being the second-largest student event in the country. Due to this, SF is often cited as one of the prime example showcasing the management skills of IITians in general. The fest is also able to attract a reasonable amount of coverage from the electronic and print-media (MTV India and The Telegraph, Kolkata). The core-team, known as the Action & Publicity (AP) team, is formed around seven to eight months before the event. This team consists of student representatives, student team heads and members. The team is largely responsible for garnering sponsorship for the event from external agencies, such as companies in India and also conducts publicity of the events throughout colleges in India during the year. During SF, the AP team performs coordinative tasks to make sure the events run smoothly and the guests and sponsors are catered to.
The individual events are handled by event-specific teams managed by student heads, sub-heads and volunteers. The pre-event tasks, like putting-up of banners, internal publicity, security, student accommodation, transportation, guest reception, and arena design, are distributed among other student teams which are not associated with a specific event.
[edit] Influence on IIT Kharagpur
The regular academic sessions at IIT Kharagpur are known to be intense due to the large number of courses and topics involved which are taught during an extremely short duration. This is taxing for both the students as well as the faculty members and assistant staff. SF provides a welcome respite to the residents of IIT Kharagpur by being rejuvenative and recreational as well as by acting as a mid-session break. Acting as the ultimate wind-out time for KGPians, SF is known not only for its events but also for the general atmosphere of student revelry surrounding the institute. Even after SF ends, casual chats between students regarding the various events and speculations regarding the participants/artistes for the coming year are very common throughout the rest of the academic session.
[edit] Comparison with Kshitij
Recently, due to the phenomenal rise of Kshitij (the annual techno-management fest of IIT Kharagpur, which is also organized completely by students in a separate team), there have been talks about an SF -versus-Kshtij feud. The prizes for the events in SF are known to be meagre compared to those in the events in Kshitij. Also, there have been claims that indicate far too much importance is being put on Star Nites as the flagship event for SF which is leading to the neglect of other events. Proponents of SF claim Kshtij to be less accessible to the general students due to the technical nature of its events while maintaining that SF has a more universal appeal.
The scales of both these fests have increased in size remarkably over the years.
