Alfaaz

Alfaaz is the annual literary festival of the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati (IIT-G), Guwahati, India. The word Alfaaz means words in Persian language and accordingly consists of literary competitions, panel discussions, lectures, demonstrations, video conferences and workshops. The festival is traditionally held over two days and three nights during March, and attracts participants from all over India. Alfaaz is the biggest literary festival of North East India and is also the biggest, scale wise, when compared to any engineering institute in India. It provides collegiate students with a platform to showcase their literary talents and raise social issues, especially, social issues of the North Eastern regions of India.

Overview

The Budget

This is a unique debating event in which teams prepare a Union Budget for India, and debate upon it against opposing teams to prove it the best. This involves a great deal of research, especially by the organizers who create scenario for the complete nation, based on which the teams prepare a budget. It also involves the introduction of new bills which are later on sent to the Govt of India for review. The Budget was a brainchild of the Literary Society of IIT Guwahati. The participants are from various engineering, law, management and arts colleges of India. Sadly it was canceled due to technical reasons from alfaaz but was later organized as final event of technotholon during techniche 2009.

Lectures & Panel Discussion

Alfaaz has lectures by various individuals from the field of literature, arts, industry and economics. Along with this a panel discussion on current topics is also organised.

Literary Events

A number of literary events feature prominently in Alfaaz. They include:

• Extempore: It is an exhaustive test of the speaker’s spontaneity, content, wit, fluency, confidence and of course their presence of mind!
• Turncoat: Ever had two minds? In such a situation it becomes really difficult to convince oneself of whats right and whats not. Now think of a scenario where you have to take sides on a topic not one but both. This is turncoat which gives you a chance to be dichotomous!
• Poetry: Needs no introduction. Come and went out all your emotions and mesmerize the atmosphere with your poetry.
• Arbit: It is basically a creative writing competition which primarily checks your imagination, amongst other things. In essence, you basically need to think out of the box. It can be funny-we don’t mind people getting campy-cheesy with it.
• Photojournalism: A photographer takes pictures of nouns. A photojournalist takes the best of them and locks into the most powerful medium available in order to tell a news story. The participant has to predict the theme depicted by the photos shown to him/her and pen his thoughts.

Distinguished Conveners

• Siddharth Mehta
• Vikram Chatterji
• Crime Master Gogo

Miscellaneous

Other includes:

• Movie Festival
• Performing Arts Fest
• Workshops
• Opening Night Band Performance
• GtalkBots

External links

• Alfaaz website
• IIT Guwahati official website