THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The second day of the Kerala University Youth Festival 2019 witnessed a huge pool of people rushing into the venue to cheer participants. For the first time in the history of the Youth Festival, all events are being conducted on a single campus, the Karyavattom campus, facilitating the participants and the public with the ease of shuttling from one venue to the other.
"Being a participant, I find it easy to switch from one location to another even though the campus is big. Unlike the last festival at Kollam, we students know all the nine venues inside the campus and it helps us to keep a track on the events without missing any," said Nandana R S, thiruvathira participant and second-year BA Philosophy student of Govt College for Women, Thycaud.
However, the general public has a different opinion as they find a single venue overcrowded. "As the entire festival is taking place inside one campus, there might be a major drop in the number of spectators among the general public. They tend to leave early as it is quite boring to watch events inside one, sole campus," said Aravind S Saji, spectator, Karyavattom.
Despite the participation of 286 colleges across the state with more than 5000 students, there are no engineering colleges taking part this year for the first time in history. The festival has been titled 'Honge-Kaamyaab Youth Festival of Survival' which is themed on the aspect of rebuilding Kerala after the dreadful floods, Nipah outbreak and the Cyclone Ockhi. The extreme weather conditions and the delay in competitions have affected participants. "The weather drains our energy. The Thiruvathira competition which was scheduled at 9 am began late- we waited in costumes and makeup for long. One of our participants fainted which was also an effect of excess heat and exhaustion. Teachers were asked to carry extra bottles of water and glucose to help participants stay cool," said Amala Maria Vincent, participant, Mar Ivanios College, Nalanchira.
According to Achuthsankar S Nair, director, Department of Bioinformatics, Karyavattom Campus, the youth festival might make a difference in the way outsiders look at the campus. "Being the nerve centre of the Kerala University, the campus is going to be re-booted in its perception after the festival. For the first time, the campus has youth vibes as we have only postgraduate and PhD courses which comprise a mature crowd.
In the olden days, engineering colleges used to consider themselves as upper castes, they were not involved in art or literary fests. Now, things have changed. Even though they are under a different university, engineering colleges do take part in art events, in fact, Mar Baselius College used to have an upper hand in the same," said Achuthsankar. He also mentioned that talent is equally distributed and students take art events seriously these days. He feels it is high time we switch to online voting formats to help our favourite team win during youth festivals, the way reality shows work.