Proposal Critique — Manish Datta — General Secretary, Sports And Games
Link to the complete proposals:
Proposal 1: Organization of a “Summer Sports Camp” in the month of May.
Need: Our performance in Inter-IITs has declined severely, of late. Engaging the fresher and the second year batches to invest their summers would serve the contingent well in helping churn out better players by December.
Feasibility: The candidate has offered a comprehensive plan outlining his agenda for the camp. Though we are skeptical as to how his team arrived at the numbers quoted in reference to the response and the homesickness factors, the clear willingness of the previous contingent towards conducting the camp should itself serve as the impetus required to start planning for next year.
Impact: Given the low proportion of second years in the previous contingent, we do believe that conducting a summer camp along the lines of IIT-K (which recorded a very strong performance last December), would remedy at least some issues associated with the UG demographics of our teams. Nonetheless, as PG/RS students cannot devote such amounts of time in the summers, we question the degree to which a successful execution would aid the post-graduate representation in the final contingent.
Proposal 2: Exclusive Alumni funding for the 12 sub-committees of Sports and Games,Technology Students’ Gymkhana IIT Kharagpur
Need: Year on year, the meager Gymkhana Sports budget fails to provide any real improvement to the sporting facilities in the campus. By reaching out to alumni who are eager to contribute to this cause, is a practical solution. With no such direct visible channel present today, this becomes a very relevant proposal.
Feasibility: While it seems fairly simple that alumni contributions are directly utilized to improve sporting facilities, it is a much more complicated task in reality. Given the rigidity of the Gymkhana when it comes to monetary issues, we feel that it is very unlikely that the Gymkhana would give a GSec/Secy(even under the purview of the President) to handle the entire account without a planned budget proposal.
Impact: The proposal lacks clear details regarding where and when these funds will be utilized which makes the impact of this proposal very uncertain. Giving the alumni the choice of sport to invest in might end up being a double edged sword. On one hand, it ensures that the alumni are more closely connected to games that they contribute to. Consequently, certain games might lose out on key contributions due to lack of alumni funding something that can be addressed if instead a common sports account was implemented.
