The ups and downs of Dasara festivities

Every year new events are being added to Dasara to make it more interesting and keep in line with the recent happenings. Though this year several events evoked good response from the public, some of them failed to make any impact due to lack of publicity, while others drew strong criticism by pro-Kannada activists terming it as 'Saffronisation of Dasara'.

Lack of preparation and dearth of publicity led several events to receive luke warm response. Even after coming out with 27 sub-committees, several of the programmes were not planned well and there was lot of confusion among event organisers. Below is a list of ups and downs of the Dasara.

One positive impact of this year's Dasara was that dozens of local artistes got a chance to show-case their talent with events organised at six venues across city for nine days of the Dasara festivities.

The regular events such as Makkala Dasara, Food Mela, Dasara Heritage Walk, Yuva Sambrama, Raitha Dasara, Flower Show, cultural programme for handicap, Kite Festival took a center stage. The newly introduced programmes such as Magic Show, Suryaninda Chandranedege (Dawn to Dusk), an 12-hour cultural programme and the Yoga Dasara held at palace received a good response.

Wrestling witnessed a good crowd due to challenging bouts between seasoned wrestlers. Though Dasara Film festival was inaugurated with lot of funfair, due to lack of publicity the response was moderate. Same with the Mahila Dasara too. Even the Dasara Market Watch intended to draw the people's intention failed miserably.

There was no fee for the some of the adventure sports, unaware of it the turn out of people was very less. Even the 48-hour cycle race was also called off mid-way.

Events that failed miserably to attract people were the Dasara Kavi Goshti, Vidwat Goshti and Dharmika Dasara as there was a lot of opposition to these events.