Shaastra
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Shaastra is an annual technical festival (techfest) of the Indian Institute of Technology Madras. Shaastra takes its name from the Sanskrit word for science.
Beginning as Pragma in 1997, the festival has traditionally focused on quizzes related to engineering and technology, technical workshops and video conferences, as well as contests that test engineering skill and intuition. Pragma was renamed to Shaastra in 2000, a year which also saw a substantial overhaul of the model by which it was organized.
Besides being one of the largest technical festivals in India in terms of participation and budget, Shaastra holds the distinction of being the first student managed event in the world to implement a formal Quality Management System, one that has earned it the [[ISO 9001:2000]] certification.
In the past Shaastra has organized a contest called the Spirit of Engineering which aimed to build the largest paper bridge in the world made entirely out of paper and rope, successfully conducted the world's second entrepreneurship simulation contest (the first one being conducted by Stanford), and held video conferences with personalities as diverse as code expert Simon Singh, distinguished scientist Stephen Wolfram, and Kevin Warwick, the 'human cyborg'.
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