Every year, BITSAA Pune organizes 2 annual events - one on 26th Jan and another on 15th August. While 26th Jan is a picnic-type outdoor event, 15th August event is held in a formal indoor setting along with AGM and elections . National holidays are chosen so that every alum can participate as every industry and establishment has a holiday on these days. Why, not a Sunday, one may ask thinking it is a holiday for everyone? Well this is Pune and here Sunday is not a holiday or weekend for every industry. Pune is known for automobile and manufacturing industry since long before it came to be associated with new age industries such as IT, BPO and Education. And that old industry belt (Pimpri, Chinchwad, Bhosari, Chakan) has its weekly off on Thursdays. Popular belief has it that Thursday is weekly off for old economy industries because it has industrial power cuts on Thursdays! Why Thursdays for power cuts, would be the next question from an inquisitive Bitsian? Let us stop this inquest here as I believe we are now transgressing into the territory of Archaeological Survey of India (and also my own closely guarded ignorance).
Since a large number of alums in Pune, especially from earlier batches are associated with the industry that observes Thursday as its weekly off, an event on Saturdays or Sundays is not convenient to them. Hence, since early days the BITSAA Pune annual gatherings are held on national holidays. Many people have time and again wondered why Independence day and Republic day are chosen for BITSAA Pune events. So now you know it has all to do with convenience and nothing to do with any misplaced jingoism.
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2 comments:
is there any event coming up --what's the plan for ID ???
Pankaj, the next event is on 6th September. We decided to push the Independence day event to 6th Sept, for 2 reasons: 1) It was raining heavily 2) We came to know about a visit VC Dr LKM to Pune on 5th Sept for a function.
So we decided to push to 6th hoping alums would get an opportunity to meet with VC as well. However, unfortunately VC couldn't manage to stay back but Dean BR Natarjan is able to join us.
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