An article from The Argus, Bay area newspaper.

[Karthikeyan Seshachalam <>]

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FREMONT -- The Festival of India may have become a victim of its own
success. 
In nine years, the festival crowd has grown from 12,000 to the estimated
70,000 from throughout the Bay Area who attended last weekend's event. 
But complaints about the event -- held behind the Fremont Hall of Justice on
Paseo Padre Parkway at Walnut Avenue -- have led the city to re-evaluate its
permit for next year, Fremont Deputy City Manager Dave Millican said. 
"Any time we have an event like this, we try to learn from it," Millican
said. "Some of the things that happened with the festival didn't work the
way we expected them to, and we'll try to make sure they don't happen
again." 
Because of some of these problems, the biggest of which was noise, next
year's festival probably will not be held at the same venue and might not
include amplified music at night, Millican said. 
Police received complaints from nearby residents about littering, illegal
parking and noise from a late-night concert, police Sgt. Tom Mikkelsen said.

Seven officers were assigned to the festival Saturday and 20 on Sunday, but
another 10 officers and three supervisors were sent to deal with crowds at
the overbooked Sunday night concert, Mikkelsen said. 
Another problem was the delay in cleaning up debris after the festival,
which hampered Monday parking at the courthouse, Millican said. 
"If you consider the Festival of the Arts, which is a much larger event, it
is cleaned up well before the next morning," he said. 
Yogi Chugh, spokesman for the Federation of Indo-American Associations,
which organized the event, acknowledged problems with the concert and the
post-festival cleanup. 
Chugh said the federation will work with the city to improve things next
year. 
"Our first and fundamental goal that we want to preserve is that we want to
be considerate of our neighbors," he said. 
Chugh said the federation would look at many options, such as having the
festival run for three days instead of two or moving popular events to
another location. He didn't rule out moving the festival to another city
next year, but said it would be a last resort. 
"This location has been a good location," he said. "The Indian community has
been a very vibrant group in the Tri-City area. ... I think before we start
looking at changing location, we have to look at can we do anything any
different at the location we have." 
The dramatic growth of the Festival of India parallels a surge in the local
Indian population in the past 10 years. 
Fremont's Indo-American population grew by 372 percent to 20,742 in the past
decade, according to Census 2000 data. This is the third-largest Indian
population in the state, following only Los Angeles and San Jose. 
The Bay Area as a whole has experienced a similar growth, with the number of
Indo-Americans almost tripling since 1990, according to the census. 
The festival, which commemorates India's Independence Day, first was held in
1992. Several different venues have been used over the years, including
Ohlone College and Washington Hospital. 
"We've had eight good festivals, and this ninth festival has been a good
festival as well, apart from some of these issues," Chugh said. "In our mind
an event is not a success just when a lot of people show up, it has to be an
event where people say, 'This was a great event.'"


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