The Spring Fest is the annual social and cultural festival of Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, one of the most elite institutions in India.It is held during January in the Spring semester. It was first held in 1960 for the students to showcase their extra-curricula talents, and over the years it has grown into one of the biggest college fests in India. In 2017, the footfall was up to 50,000. The 59th Spring fest will be held between January 26 to January 28, 2018.
The fest conducts multiple events encircling 11 genres like dance, music, dramatics, photography, quiz, debate, literature and fine arts. It has over 130 events with a total cash prize of INR 30 lakhs. There ae flagship events like Nukkad (street play competition), Shuffle (street dance competition), Wildfire (rock band competition), which are conducted nationally, and other notable events like Rangmanch (inter-college dramatics event), Contrifuge (inter-college dance event) , Sargam (eastern musical jam event), Mary Bucknell trophy (the prestigious quiz competition). Wherever the Spring fest visits to conduct prelims, the atmosphere turns wild and festive and tremendous competition and enthusiasm is witnessed. Celebrity guests and judges from different fields such as Rakesh Bedi, Purbayan Chatterjee, Makrand Deshpande, Gilad Dobrecky, Kailash Kher, Nagesh Bhosle, Naseeruddin Saha and others are invited to judge the competitions.
Non-competition based events include Hard Talk (talks/conferences by eminent members from different fields) and IIT-KGP MUN. Major activities take place in Arena, which include Informals (hosts numerous casual events) and Prepz stage (all day dance floor with DJ). They attract major crowd.
The evenings are super fun in here, commonly known as Star nites. The biggest events in the Spring Fest, includes concerts by some very famous musicians, singers and bands from all over the world. The venue for these events are Tagore Open Air theatre (TOAT) and Jnan Ghosh Stadium. They get packed with crowd, almost 23,000 people on these pro nights. Famous Indian artists like Farhan Akhtar, Amit Trivedi, Salim and Sulaiman, Pritam, Kailash Kher, KK, Papon, SP Balasubramaniam, Shaan, Sunidhi Chauhan, Vishal-Shekhar, Shweta Pandit, Sukhwinder Singh, Shivamani and classical performers like Pandit Debashish Bhattacharya, Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia, L. Sriram, Pandit Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, and Pandit Divyang Vakil have performed here. Bands like Pentagram, Swarathma, Underground Authority, Kryptol, Parikrama, Euphoria, Ocean, Strings and international bands like Dead by April, Breathe, The Floyd Soung, Monument, and Tesserac T have also performed here.
The event attracts large amount of media coverage. MTV India and the Telegraph, Kolkata covered the fest extensively in the previous years. It has endless sponsors and associations starting from HTC, Jio digital life, Hero, VH1, MTV, Telegraph, Coca Cola, Bajaj Allianz, SBI, Jet Airways, Red FM, Zomato and many, many others. Laughalaughi is one of their online media partners in the year 2018.
Students nationally and especially the students of IIT wait for this iconic event all year long. The 3 day event is filled with so much fun and ecstasy along with so many talents to witness. It is a break from the routine life of the students. The Spring Fest has amazing reviews from all over the world. The environment turns more festive than ever and it is a lifetime experience for everyone who attends the fest. People who have graduated in the 70s and 80s still visit Spring Fest to relive their college life and experience the evergreen fest. Each year they make new innovations and bring in more and more events which makes it even more exciting and worthwhile.
