Shaastra

Shaastra is the annual technical festival of the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IITM), Chennai, India. The Sanskrit word ‘Shaastra’ means science and the festival accordingly consists of various engineering, science and technology competitions, summits, lectures, video conferences, exhibitions, demonstrations and workshops. The festival is traditionally held over four days and four nights during the first week of January. It has so far seen twenty one editions, having started in its current avatar in the year 2000. Shaastra attracts participation from all over India, and seeks to provide collegiate students with a platform to showcase their scientific and engineering talents. Shaastra is entirely student managed and is the first such event in the world to be ISO 9001:2015 certified for implementing a Quality Management System. It is one of Asia's largest completely student-run techno-managerial festivals.

For other uses, see Shastra.

History

In 1996, Prof. R Natarajan took over as director and instituted several committees to study several ways of improving IIT Madras. One of his committees, the committee on new mechanisms of Teacher Learning Interactions, was tasked with coming up with ways of inspiring students. This committee, headed by Prof. Ajit Kumar Kolar, came up with a suggestion to create a technology festival in IIT Madras. On the behest of Prof. U R Rao, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Institute, in 1997, several students came together and staged 'Pragmaa', a technical festival, in 1997, and then in 1999.

Students applied for and took on the role of Coordinators for various events. A set of colleges around the country was targeted and the amount required to run the event was raised through sponsorship agreements. The first edition of Shaastra was thus planned and took place starting 9 March 2000. Since then, Shaastra has continued to expand year by year, and has established itself as one of the premiermost technical fest in India. The latest edition of Shaastra, was held in January 2020, with the theme 'Parsec to Planck'. The 2020 edition of Shaastra saw prominent speakers including Dr. V.K. Saraswat, Mr. Suresh Prabhu, Mr. Robin Li, Arunachalam Muruganathan and Dr. C. Rangarajan.[1]

Current edition

With the Covid-19 global pandemic, Shaastra 2021 shifted to hold events online on February 25-28th. They have already had multiple events completely online which include:

  1. Shaastra Juniors for school students across India which had competitions like Spark (a national level online quiz), Shaastra Art Challenge, Junior Make-A-Thon (a competition to bring out the builder in students which was given a twist in this online set up and conducted as a case study competition based on significant social and environmental issues), Shaastra Junior Chess Tournament, Hour of Code and much more. They also had workshops and events such as Brainsqueeze, Computational Thinking Workshop and Junior Nights (exciting night shows from artists like Dan Rhodes) among others.
  2. The Spotlight Stay@Home Series [1] on their YouTube channel[2], featuring the likes of Dr. Madhavan Nair (Former Chairman at ISRO and Architect of Chandraayan-1), Mr. Prasanth Chandrasekhar (CEO Stack Overflow), Dr. Gilles Brassard (Quantum Physicist at Université de Montréal) and culminating with the former RBI governor Dr. Raghuram Rajan.
  3. Shaastra Summit provides a platform for students from all across the country to learn and network with experts on a certain theme. Through a conference during Shaastra, participants of the summit are given several opportunities to learn from stalwarts of the industry. With a theme that changes every year, Shaastra has previously conducted summits on Accessibility (2017), Green Energy (2018), Sports Tech (2019), and Defence Tech(2020)This year, Shaastra will be conducting the Archi-Tech Summit with events like Summit Masterclass Series [3] and Post Pandemic Redesign Contest already completed.
  4. The launch of this year's theme: Schrodinger's Realms for students from IIT Madras which included games for the audience.
  5. Every year the students at Shaastra conduct a social campaign to give back to society in some way. This year's social campaign is "She Can" - it focuses on women empowerment through up-skilling, financial literacy and spreading awareness about various opportunities available to women. They overcame many challenges posed by the pandemic and the lock-down situation by conducting this campaign entirely online. They have impacted over 450 girls and women with sessions on career guidance, financial literacy and entrepreneurial talks. The campaign launch which happened on their youtube channel included a panel discussion among 4 esteemed guests - Ms. Preeti Aghalayam (a Professor at IIT Madras), Ms. Roopa Karemungikar (Entrepreneur and IIT Madras Alumnus), Ms Vandana R (CEO of Wsquare) and Ms Jagadharini Sampathkumar (Fromer VP, National Stockexchange). The campaign has also received support from Dr. Ramesh Pokhriyal (Minister of Education, India) and the Ministry of Education on Twitter.
  6. Shaastra Upskill and Teaching-Learning Centre, IIT Madras, conducted a workshop series to familiarise school teachers with the various tools at hand in online teaching and to improve teaching efficiency online. The sessions were conducted by skilled academicians from IIT Madras and included Professor Arun K Tangirala, Professor Shreepad Karmalkar, Professor Ananth Krishnan, Professor C.S. Ramalingam, Mrs Geetha Sukumar and Mrs Indu K.M. The sessions can be found on Shaastra's youtube channel.

There are more events being planned for the fest during February which will be announced on their instagram page.

References
  1. Sudhish Kamath (23 February 2000). "Getting ready for 'shaastra'". The Hindu. Retrieved 18 January 2016.
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