Once upon a time, before the Ice Age, before dinosaurs, before Adam and Eve, but after The Big Bang (what did you think?) came the Universe’s first two creations.
They were two constructs whose souls were enantiomeric mirror images.
Their names were K. R. Rahul and K. L. Rahul and since the ancient ages, they’ve been part of a divine tug-of-war.
It has long been conjectured that there exists a dichotomous relationship of win and lose where the times of ups of K. R. have always reported to coincide with the downs of K. L.
Manifesting themselves in various avatars over history, they have now come to the planet Earth as the prolific ex-General Secretary of the TSG and a struggling cricketer for the Lucknow Super Giants.
The reporters of The Scholars’ Avenue have decided to validate this conjecture by asking both these constructs about the ups, downs and various related questions about their tenure.
While K. L. Rahul seems to have made a critical error in judgment by not responding to our mails, we are delighted to inform you that K. R. Rahul has obliged us with an interview to discuss his tenure as the ex-General Secretary of the TSG.
What follows is a detailed article describing the interview.
Question: Could you please elaborate on some of the responsibilities you shouldered during your GSec tenure?
KR Rahul: Our tenure started around the month of August, I came to campus in the month of July to look around things and learn what is happening. Major responsibilities in my tenure which I would state are conducting Open-IITs, conducting events in the domain of Social and Cultural. Then we had Inter IIT Cultural Meet 5.0 which was held in IIT Madras. Then we had Spring Fest 2023 and finally the General Championship.
Question: Could you describe some of the challenges and obstacles you faced in your tenure and how you overcame them? Especially since it was a transition from an online to an offline semester.
KR Rahul: The biggest challenge we faced was that we could not find enough people who had actual knowledge about how things happen. Say Inter-IIT, in Inter-IIT, last batch which had seen it are the current fifth years. They had seen it from a second year’s perspective. In Inter-IIT, you plan out strategies for every single event as Contingent Leader, as General Secretaries of the Gymkhana. You don’t involve second years in the planning part. They are mostly involved in the performance part. So the fifth years on campus right now have only seen the performance part of Inter-IIT. So for us to plan it from scratch without having people to guide us was probably the biggest challenge we had. Even for the General Championship, people who have actually seen, the Secretaries and General Secretaries of that time, either have graduated or are fifth years right now, who are slightly more difficult to approach than batchmates or fourth years. So getting this funda of how to host things, how to host SF, how to host Inter-IIT, how to participate and travel to other IITs to perform was something very new to us. So we had to sit together and brainstorm multiple times with various stakeholders. For Inter-IIT we had our captains, for SF we had our head team, SCom team and others. We had to grind out everything using our brains, that was the most difficult part.
Question: What are the initiatives you took during your tenure, what is the status of your proposals?
KR Rahul: I’ll tell you one thing regarding elections, when you make the proposals you just have 13–15 days of knowledge regarding the domain. When I was contesting for the post of General Secretary Social and Cultural, I had very little knowledge about what was happening in the Social and Cultural domain. I started to explore when I filled my nomination. So my proposals included something like talent cafes. When I actually took charge, you get a different perspective. You have to hold people together, in SF you have to hold an entire team together which itself is a very big responsibility. You understand many things which are not given much importance. I would say infrastructure for Social and Cultural activities, functioning of societies, the freedom given to societies. All of this I realized probably after a month or two of my tenure. We took up the initiative to have a good bunch of second, third and fourth years mingling with each other in the Social and Cultural domain. If you talk about societies right now, they have a very good mix of second, third and fourth years which probably was very difficult to find during an online tenure. In Inter-IIT as well, we have a good bunch of second years, whom I could name but I would not prefer to do so right now. They will take up responsibility next year. Once things get into auto-drive mode, this is a well oiled system. That would be an ideal situation for a General Secretary. That is one thing which we planned to do this year and we were about 70–80% successful.
Question: Are you satisfied with your tenure and do you feel you could have done something better?
KR Rahul: Satisfied is a very subjective term. I won’t say I’m satisfied, no office-bearer would say so. Everybody knows where they have gone wrong. Logistics of Inter-IIT could have been slightly better. I would have loved it if the six halls could have played in the General Championship. That is my biggest regret. Any GSec of the TSG, VP or even Hall Presidents would say the competition would be much better if those six halls played. Right now, without those six halls things are slightly off standard. You can visit some GC events, there are a couple of halls which keep up the competition, but those six halls being one of the major players, things have gone south slightly.
Question: As you mentioned about the six halls, what better could you have done in that regard, or was it just an administrative decision?
KR Rahul: It was mainly an administrative decision that was taken to make a statement because of the issue that happened during last year’s election. We don’t know how we could have done it better, but there is still this feeling lingering that we could have done better.
Question: What would be your advice to the incoming General Secretary Socult to ensure a smooth transition?
KR Rahul: One advice would be to keep an open mind because you will learn a lot during your tenure. When you step in, you generally don’t know much. You learn as your tenure progresses. I learnt about the functioning of societies, what their problems were, how an entire event is held. In my second year, I barely had conducted an event. But right now, an entire General Championship is being conducted and we have decided that next year we are hosting the Inter-IIT Cultural Meet as well. I would tell them too to keep their minds open and keep looking for opportunities to do better.
Question: Since you said we are hosting the Inter-IIT Cultural Meet next year, what are the preparations for the same?
KR Rahul: It will be mostly up to the next GSecs. As advisors, we will be there to help them out. Basically, there will be an organizing team and a contingent. The Organizing Team will be hosting the event similar to what happens in SF and KTJ. It will be headed by three or four people and there will be a team of 15–20 heads and then we will have secretaries and coordinators coordinating every single event. All this will be governed by a professor in charge, probably President TSG himself.