Broader Cult Vision Elusive in a Battle of Experience Vs Polt 

In an interesting turn of events this election season, only 2 of the General Secretary positions remain contested, and the GSCA is one of them. Both contesting candidates, Omprakash Chaturvedi and Sai Pranav Bhagavatula, come from the dramatics background, albeit with different experiences. While both served as the convenor of Fourthwall in their sophomore year, Omprakash went on to serve as the Institute Dramatics Secretary, while Pranav’s stint was centred on his tenure as the Inter IIT Genre Captain in Theatre Arts. The race for GSCA has been defined by Omprakash’s reliance on experience and the council’s backing, against Pranav’s strong base of support from several non-ICC circles.

As has been the case with the GSCA manifestos, a focus has been on organising new events to broaden the reach of culturals among students, especially in communities like PGs, where participation has been dwindling. Several clubs in ICC have also started observing participation drops in the newer UG batches as well. However, a general soapbox consensus was that event initiatives by both candidates in this regard are misguided in trying to increase this reach. What has also been a recurring concern is that the introduction of new events, while well-intentioned, causes an already cramped ICC timeline to get strained further

Similarly, both candidates showed a notable lack of publicity vision; while their manifestos have a host of social media initiatives to drive reach, a lot of such initiatives have been proposed before, but they were not successfully actualised. There has been a lack of clarity about what they are doing differently. In general, publicity has assumed outsized importance, from the GSCA manifestos to those of club secretaries, despite limited evidence that newer strategies are translating into meaningful engagement. Beyond such broader gaps, both candidates also face challenges specific to their own campaigns.

Pranav’s competency and lack of cooperation with other teams in his Inter IIT tenure have been called into question by other genre captains. This has been accompanied by a perception of his comparative lack of knowledge about the inner workings of the administrative and logistical processes in culturals, often relying on very idealistic scenarios to justify his initiatives. Pranav also faced a factual correction in his soapbox related to PG Orientation.

While Omprakash carries organisational experience in his bag, his campaign has been riddled with underconfidence, which has affected his reach among people not directly associated with culturals circles. His proposals for tech-based solutions also suffer from a lack of foresight in the sense that such initiatives have failed before, too. Moreover, the soapbox also hinted that Omprakash may not have a dedicated vision for expanding reach among the PGs, which has otherwise been a running concern among several ICC clubs.

At the moment, both candidates suffer from a lack of long-term vision to solve structural problems that have plagued culturals recently – some of them being general logistical mismanagement, Inter IIT hassles, dwindling participation, and toxic culture. A concerted reconsideration must therefore be on the cards for both of them in trying to tackle these administrative and logistical obstacles, rather than new initiatives that only have marginal advantages.