– Aakash “BMX” Gupta, Cocurricular Affairs Secretary
From its inception a decade ago, Shaastra has been ever growing in size, style and substance. This year, we aimed to consolidate that growth, and explore completely new interdisciplinary avenues of social international relevance.
Shaastra 2009’s theme was sustainability. We realized this at multiple levels: Discussions, Policy decisions, and application.
Through the Symposium for sustainable development, brightest young minds from all disciplines be it law, engineering, management, economics etc. mentored by organisations like the World Bank, TERI, UMC etc. framed responsible policies for the sustainaible development of the world we live in.
To practice what we preach, the students of IIT Madras united to make Shaastra 2009 a sustainable entity itself through a unique initiative called SOS(Sustainability Of Shaastra). This included a highly successful venture to give participants optional transport in terms of bicycles to travel inside the campus.
The heart of Shaastra however lies withits highly competitive event line-up. Competitions like Robotics, JYW, contraptions etc. received tremendous response which shows the approval of the technical community towards the finesse of these events. A lot of new events were added as well e.g. events related to aerotechnology which include all levels strating from Glider design to fully autonomous planes.
In a seemingly impossible ordeal; a team of IIT-M students took up the challenge to make a car within 4 days. Not only that, the car can be converted to a motorcycle within minutes.
A lot of focus was on technical exhibitions this year, which included an Aeroshow, LASER show, innovative display methods like water screen and fog screen etc.But the highlight was the display of student projects at the CFI expo.
Endless hours were put in by a team of around 1000 students during Shaastra 2009. Let this compilation serve as a memoir of their efforts because they are truly Shaastra Vishesh.
