Keeping the patriotic fervour high and following the preventive measures for Covid-19, the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar (IITGN) community celebrated Independence Day 2021 in hybrid mode, with minimal physical gathering offline but great enthusiasm through online participation. The Institute and its student community hosted a number of interesting events themed around 75 years of India’s Independence, with collective prizes of more than Rs 10,000.
The Institute organised a flag hoisting ceremony with minimal gathering. Most of the IITGN community joined remotely in the live webcast of the programme on the Institute’s YouTube channel.
Delivering a ceremonial speech Prof Sudhir Jain, Director, IITGN gave Independence Day greetings to the IITGN community and urged them to look back on the progress made so far and to reflect on what more can be done in the future. Appreciating the collective strength shown by the community and progress made by the Institute in the most challenging time of the pandemic, Professor Jain said, “We as a community have shown outstanding collective efforts to support each other and our surrounding community during the pandemic. The Institute has also made significant progress on the research front in the last one year despite all the challenges. We take pride in these achievements, which can be attributed to the institutional culture and values. This Independence Day, we should also reflect on how we can use our institutional culture and values to further enhance students’ educational experience and our research.”
The Physical Education section, along with the Sports Council of IITGN, conducted Shirshasana Challenge for the IITGN community in the morning, which saw encouraging participation from fitness enthusiasts of the community. The stand out participant in the challenge was Ms Janakshi Vaishnav (staff’s family member), with an extraordinary holding time of 10 minutes. The sports council is also organising Fit India Freedom Run 2.0 to promote fitness amongst the community. IITGN students and community members, whether on-campus or off-campus, have registered to participate in the run using an online platform.
The Palette club of IITGN has organised a Philately: a stamp designing competition, where participants are required to design a postage stamp of denomination of rupees 75 (to celebrate the start of the 75th year of Indian Independence) envisioning the India of 2047.
The Literary Society of the Institute also arranged an online spoken word competition – Road to Glory – on the theme of “India on its way to being a Digital Superpower”. IITGN community members unleashed their oratory skills through this event. In remembrance of the sacrifices made by our freedom fighters, the Quizzing Society of IITGN held a short Freedom Day Quiz competition, which saw enthusiastic participation even from outside the IITGN community.