Proposal Critique — Akhilesh Gundu — General Secretary, Sports And Games
Link to the complete proposals:
Proposal 1: Enhancing the involvement of Post Graduate and Research Scholar students( Men and Women) in the sporting fraternity which includes the active participation in the inter-IIT sports meet.
Need — A sports week for research scholars was organised in December of last year unofficially. The candidate claims that PG/RS representation in sporting events is < 10% despite there being over 6000 students in the community. However, there’s little reason to believe that is because of a lack of opportunities or facilities available to them. They’re deeply immersed in their research activities, and free time is not as ubiquitous to them as it might be to the UG populace.
Implementation— Given that a women’s week has been conducted before, the implementation doesn’t appear to be an issue. Nonetheless, it would require massive publicity to attain the desired participation levels.
Impact — If there’s no undue time burden on the PG/RS group of students that limits them from participating in the sports week, it would go a long way in redressing their concerns regarding equal access to opportunities.
Proposal 2: Formation of a club, “Run for Hope”, under the supervision of the elected General Secretaries Sports and Games, to increase the bonding among the students and to recreate themselves from the usual schedule.
Need — There is certainly a need for increased interaction among students to promote mental health which he has hoped to tackle through this proposal but we are skeptical about its effectiveness
Implementation — Given that NSO and various other marathons are organised regularly over the course of the year this proposal looks pretty feasible. Not a lot of man hours have been put into the proposal and the logistics are not presented. The candidate has simply assumed that budget will not overshoot what the Gymkhana allows.
Impact — We fail to see how these marathons will be different from those already organised by NSO which students struggle to attend. Thinking that it would help in improving the mental health of students is far fetched to say the least.
Proposal 3: Organizing guest lectures and workshops on Sports and Games presented by esteemed sports personalities which will motivate all the sports enthusiasts, especially first and second year students.
Need — To motivate people to actively participate in sports and inspire them to take up sports.
Implementation — Organizing guest lectures is surely feasible. However, he has not put up any framework in place to ensure that this is carried out without fail, which makes us skeptical of this proposal.
Impact — If the lectures are indeed organised on time as proposed they would go a long way towards motivating first-year students and inculcating the sports culture. However, our aforementioned concerns about the feasibility of the proposal are nowhere mentioned in the proposal.