The Sports Secretary of the Students’ Council 2018-19, Mr. Rishabh Shukla sat down with us at the NMC to discuss his performance in the odd semester.
Rishabh’s vision as the sports secretary is to elevate the status of sports in our campus and provide a platform for students of our institute as well as nearby colleges in Warangal to develop themselves, thus cultivating the habit of playing sports among them. He aims to achieve this by conducting a proper sports festival. Before the secretary system was announced, he supported Meer Afroz’s candidature for presidency. It was only later after the election RO’s release, announcing the four secretary positions that he decided to contest and work for the college. His motivation for choosing sports over other portfolios was that despite having everything for sports from classical venues to equipment, we are still lagging behind when it comes to results. “We need to improve in small small things,” he added.
One of the major differences this year when it comes to elections was the lack of a manifesto. None of the candidates released what could have arguably been the easiest method to hold them accountable. Students could have judged the work done by the council both qualitatively and quantitatively with respect to their manifesto points. Rishabh Shukla’s reply on not releasing it was that since it was an indirect election, he instead shared his plans with the CRs via his speech before the election. He also believes that manifestos create a terrible political environment and added, “We are just here to represent small issues. We can’t fake promise people that we can do this thing and that thing. We have limitations.” He concluded by saying that it is indeed a very good and appreciable thing to share his plans with the NIT Warangal fraternity. In the end, Rishabh finally agreed to incorporate a plan of action for next semester, after initially saying it should be done next year.
Moving on to his achievements, he considers the successful conduction of the freshers’ sports carnival over the course of two weeks as an achievement. He also feels it was better compared to last year since the number of participants as well as the events conducted were more. He has also represented for a Kabaddi ground since a mat is available in the department, so that there’s a proper place to practice and avoid player injuries. The representation has been accepted and will be seen through in the next semester. The proper cleaning of the main stadium and the 1.8K ground once in every 15-20 days is also being done since he has informally represented the issue once in the beginning of the semester and again in October. He has also represented the issue of maintenance of the basketball court inside LH which will be done in the next semester. He has rectified the issue of infrequent trainer timings in the gym and the trainer is now available for a period of two hours in the morning as well as evening.
Another achievement according to him is the regulation of indoor games such as carrom board and chess in the department which was not present earlier. The rooms now have chess and carrom boards installed properly and are open till 9 pm on weekdays. Along with Sameer Ahmed (Hostel and Mess secretary), he successfully represented regarding the requirement of gymnasium equipment in various hostels and got it sanctioned. He told us that he was looking for vendors at the time of this interview. He also added, “It’s a very big tender and hence I can’t ensure this next semester also, but we are trying to get it as soon as possible.”
Coming to his failures, Rishabh explained that sometimes there is a communication gap because of him being from North India. This sometimes affects the work as many in the P.E department know only the regional language and hence it’s difficult for him to talk to them or even ask them for a favour. He also vaguely said that there are some “problems inside” while trying to implement new things and the approval ratio is very small (about 1:3), and these are his limitations.
Another failure was his inability to get the current badminton courts replaced with synthetic courts. The representation was rejected on the grounds of it being expensive. He hopes they will be incorporated in the upcoming Alumni Convention Centre along with the swimming pool. He concluded by saying, “This semester it was all placements and other scenarios, so next sem we are “probably” going to give it very hard.”
Surprisingly, despite all the outrage on the council facebook group, Rishabh did not mention the Diwali stadium lights fiasco. On being reminded, he explained that the letter seeking permission had already been given and he wasn’t available on campus until 8:30. He added that the department heads weren’t available, so he sought permission for 1.8K ground as a replacement. Rishabh concluded by saying, “It was a very big blunder from all of us and I accept this thing as a failure.”
Plans for next semester:
(This being a rough plan, we hope that Mr. Rishabh Shukla releases a detailed PoA soon as mentioned by him at the beginning of this interview.)
- Ayodhyan
Rishabh plans on conducting the sports fest in February. This year he plans on having league events, individual based events, some olympic events, wrestling and weightlifting events for Mr. Ayodhyan title, interaction with sports personalities and informals, thus making Ayodhyan a proper sports festival. He also plans on releasing formal core applications for Ayodhyan this year, unlike the previous edition. In conclusion, he added, “Let us make Ayodhyan a bit transparent, a bit big, that’s what the goal is.”
- Successful conduction of College Premier league and Football league.
- Following through on the kabaddi ground and the hostel gymnasium equipment projects.
- Self defense classes for interested students.
Rishabh said he will proceed with this once a plan is formalized and has spoken to the girls secretary regarding the same.
- Coaching for sports:
He explained that certain sports do not have proper coaches. He plans on getting at least part time coaches who will be available for 2-3 hours on the weekends. He has spoken informally to the Director and Dean’s panel regarding this but a formal representation is yet to be given and accepted.
- Facilitate conduction of Intramurals, Extramurals and Inter-NIT
- 1.8K basketball court:
Rishabh has plans on developing the basketball court near 1.8K with a cover and to further make it a proper court if students are interested.
To conclude, Rishabh Shukla considers his performance as the Sports Secretary to be better than the work done for sports by the previous Students’ Council. He further added that it was not just his work, but the whole system of having different secretaries which increases efficiency due to division of responsibility. Personally, he isn’t satisfied with his performance and hopes to do better in the next semester. On being asked to rate his work for the odd semester on a scale of 1-10, Rishabh replied, “I’ll take it as 6.5 or 7, but I will improve it.”
