The Cultural Secretaries are responsible for all intra-college cultural activities and initiating cultural exchange programmes with other institutions. The Cultural Secretary (Boys), Bandari Shiva Sai Krishna’s manifesto listed 7 distinct points, with specific details on how he planned to execute all of them. Of these seven points, 2 have been achieved, 1 is in progress and 4 have not been fulfilled yet.

Manifesto Point	Status
Cultural Book of BPHC	Not Fulfilled
Regional Grub	Fulfilled
All Event Calendar	Not Fulfilled
Excursions and Trips	Not Fulfilled
Streamlining Renaissance and Caza de Talentos	In Progress
Theme Based Weekends	Not Fulfilled
Streamlining Open Mics	Fulfilled

We now look at each point of the manifesto in detail. A copy of the complete manifesto can be found on the Election Commission, BPHC Facebook Page (click here).

Cultural Book of BPHC: Not Fulfilled

The idea behind the Cultural Book of BPHC was to create an archive for all the cultural activities conducted by the regional associations and clubs over the course of an academic semester. All the clubs and the regional associations on campus have been asked to document the events that they conduct over the course of the year. During the next semester, the Cultural Secretary plans on enlisting the help of the Journal Club to create a polished first draft of the Book. However, the Journal Club has not been approached about this endevour yet. He hopes to release it to the general body with the incoming batch of 2019. However, since the SU website has not even been updated to reflect the names of the current post holders of the SUC, where the Book will be published remains to be seen. It should be noted that this is a point common to both cultural secretaries. However, an intention to collaborate hasn’t been specified.

Regional Grubs: Fulfilled

Three regional gala dinners have been organised over the course of this semester – a Maharashtrian gala during the month of September, a Bengali gala during Dusshera and most recently, a gala dinner featuring north Indian dishes. Contrary to his manifesto, none of them had any outside chefs prepare the dishes. It is worth noting that according to the SMC, and contrary to the claims of the Cultural Secretary, none of the SUC members played a major role in organising these gala dinners and they claim that this was purely an SMC initiative. The Cultural Secretary does, however, plan to hold at least one large scale grub next semester and plans on collaborating with the Cooking Club for the same.

All Event Calendar: Not Fulfilled

While an all event calendar has not been created yet, the Cultural Secretary claims that he will work on fulfilling this as soon as the next semester begins. He plans on creating a monthly calendar that documents all the events–including cultural events, technical events, talks and competitions–that will be conducted on campus. It will also feature upcoming competitions in neighbouring colleges that the student body may choose to participate in. This, in turn, will increase club participation in inter-collegiate competitions. He will be posting a Google Drive link for the calendar on Facebook at the start of each month. Since this is one of the manifesto points that the Cultural Secretaries share in common, they plan on collaborating to achieve this next semester.

Excursions and Trips: Not Fulfilled

There has been no progress on this front yet since this semester was pretty hectic. However with a significantly higher number of fests and activities happening next semester, the fruition of this plan can be looked upon skeptically. The Cultural Secretary claims that he will collaborate with RAF to plan an excursion for the students next semester.

Streamlining Renaissance and Caza de Talentos: In Progress

Both Renaissance and Caza de Talentos have been planned for next semester as pre-Pearl events. Even though the budget for these events were not separately presented at the General Body Meeting alongside the ATMoS budget, the Cultural Secretary is confident that he will be able to release the prize money for both these events within a week of them being conducted.

Theme Based Weekends: Not Fulfilled

When it comes to theme based weekends, this semester saw a solitary Halloween-themed weekend with a single event that was conducted by the Fashion Society. The Cultural Secretary plans on working with the clubs on campus towards having more theme-based weekends next semester on a fortnightly or monthly basis. While this isn’t the original weekly frequency that was promised, he claims that it will definitely happen during the next semester.

Streamlining Open Mics: Fulfilled

This semester saw several open mics and similar events being conducted by various clubs on campus for the benefit of the general student body. The semester began with an open mic being conducted for the freshers by the Comedy Club. Throughout the course of the semester ELAS conducted slam poetry events at C3 and Nescafe lawns, the Music Club conducted a musical jam at Amul and Geetanjali conducted a Cultural Night on the occasion of Ashtami to name a few.

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Apart from the manifesto points, the Cultural Secretary plans on motivating the clubs to increase their inter-collegiate participation by having a Best Club Award (which will be a monetary prize for the winning club) at the end of the semester. He also stated that he had been in talks with the Indywood Talent Club for certification. While some work has happened so far in a semester, a lot of the plans in the manifesto are yet to even begin being implemented.

Article by Mohammed Burk and Yogitha Garlapati. Design by Rohit Dwivedula. Published 30th November, 2018