This House Believes That...

Ladies and gentlemen

This post is meant for all those kgpians who are anyhow involved in any damn literary activity on the campus. I’d be dealing with the following issues in order:

1.       1. The motivation behind this post

2.       2. The status quo

3.       3. Can we have some action please, ladies and gentlemen?

Coming to my first argument, that is, the motivation behind this post, I’d share with you, in short, my experience at the National Law School Debate.

I, along with 3 others from our insti, went to an international parliamentary debate competition at the NLSIU (National Law School of India University), Bengalooru. It was actually international, in the sense that the adjudicators were outsiders and a few teams (which were atleast 30 times better than the team of our best debaters) came from across the subcontinent. The team from IIT Kharagpur won 3 matches and lost 3, which actually was a decent achievement for any first timer team and we were praised by the adjudicators too, finally being placed somewhere around 25 out of 64 teams. Hence, to be precise, the motivation behind this post is the difference in the standards of professional debaters and those of ours.

Moving on to my second issue, that is, the status quo, I’d discuss with you, ladies and gentlemen, where we presently stand.

Well, what we currently have as the inter-hall debate is actually a mockery of itself (not to even mention the open IIT debate). We fight in sub-coms over the rules of this prestigious inter-hall debate of ours, and come out with something that a good debater from the US, or take for that matter even the Delhi University, won’t consider worth even laughing at. The problem lies in the fact that we repel the approach of any change to our so-called well-established system that itself is debatable and that actually stands far away isolated from where the world is moving, and that, ladies and gentlemen, is the motive behind this post: to initiate this change, for I now know what the status quo of the ‘earth minus IIT kgp’ system is.

For those of you who don’t know what parliamentary debating is, it is the most widely accepted form of debating today in the world, wherein two sides, one the proposition or the government and the other the opposition, debate on a topic revealed 15 minutes back, with alternate 7 minutes speeches from each side, giving and beating arguments in a very very structured manner. The dynamics and speed of this form of debate compel the debaters to bring every flucking piece of concentration, prior knowledge and on-spot reaction ability of theirs out in an environment where someone is sitting right before you to rape you openly with words and all that you can do to save yourself is to give the same fate back to her/him.

Getting to my final issue, ladies and gentlemen, I’d talk about the existence of that something that might creep into our to-think-about and to-do lists, after getting to know that in this domain of debating, even the best people of our institute actually stand nowhere before the best in the business and we can nowhere be satisfied but at the top spot. What we need to do and what I plan to do in the next semester is to start this culture of parliamentary debating in our institute using the platform of the upcoming debate club, firstly by teaching the interested speakers how to go for it, secondly by having regular practices and thirdly by going nationwide and participating in PDs all over to gain experience. The administration seems a bit supportive this year which is actually a decent signal and thus the debaters will not have to worry about anything else apart from debating.

The reason why I am suddenly advocating PD at our place is not a first time exposure to something that seems glamorous or a non-excellent performance somewhere that we are not used to of giving, but (a) PD is the most widely accepted debating format at international level and we never think below that (right?), (b) we have the best people but just not the right guidance, (c) PD involves the real test of one’s wits and intelligence and smartness, (d) once you are a good parliamentary debater, words will be all that you’ll need to rip apart absolutely anyone and (e) PD is extreme fun (believe me on that!).

Hence, ladies and gentlemen, I sincerely hope that this thought doesn’t bury itself with this post, but gives us another domain to win over, the domain of real debating. I invite the people who are genuinely interested in PD to contact me and we can work over what I just proposed above. With that, I rest my case.