Karnataka - Bangalore

Students exercise their jaws and minds

Bangalore: Debating and arguing out the nuances of a case should be second nature to lawyers; but students from arts, professional and law colleges from all over India and Sri Lanka are out to beat them at their own game in a round of “parliamentary debating.”

The Sixth International Parliamentary Debate Championship organised by the National Law School of India University (NLSIU) has 42 teams from 35 colleges waging a war of words and wit through the four-day event which commenced on November 1. The event is co-sponsored by The Hindu and Kotak Mahindra.

The competition, is in its sixth year and was won by a Sri Lankan team in 2006 and a Pakistani team in 2005. Organisers said that teams from Pakistan and Bangladesh were scheduled to participate, but could not manage visas in time.

If the preliminary rounds are anything to go by, the finals should be packed with tension, competition and energy, with students debating over issues ranging from “death penalty for rape convicts” to “revising the nature of the presidential polls”.

“The mood is upbeat and though there are international teams, the real competition is between the South and the North since there are several teams from Delhi,” said Rohit Kamra, student of R.V. College of Engineering. “The law students try to beat us with their jargon, but we have got our logic right,” he quipped.

Energy levels are high and temperatures soar to almost parliamentary levels as these young minds put forth their points of view and go all the way to support it. The theme for the event this year is ‘Debating with Dignity.’

“It emulates the British parliamentary spirit where you let the other person talk and be rational about the whole thing,” said Aditya Verma, convener of the literary and debating society, NLSIU.

“In the real Parliament, they may be biased... but here we try to make a point with logic and rationale,” said Luwie Niranjan, student from the Faculty of Law, Colombo. “We have seen clippings on the Net of tables being thrown in the Indian Parliament, we see the same sort of thing in our country.... the tables are screwed to the ground, so they throw other things,” he added with a laugh.

Parliamentary debate is a whole new ball game for those who are used to general debating. It emulates the process of policy formulation in parliament where teams pose as the government and the opposition. “This is more impromptu and elaborate since the teams have to put forth their case and also formulate an implementable policy,” said Vrinda Maheshwari, one of the organisers of the event. The type of parliament they choose is left to the imagination of the team that poses as the government.

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