A busy few months for Indian Debaters

The New Year is upon us and from the 14th of January, the Indian Parliamentary Debate season starts in full swing. There are a host of debate tournaments coming up. I will list the tournaments that I know of.

Jerome D'Souza Memorial Debate (Loyola College), Chennai - 14th to 16th Jan
Prize Money - 1,80,000 INR
Adj Core: Siddharth Chauhan, Anantaraman

VOXPOP (Jadhavpur University), Kolkata - 16th to 17th January
Prize Money - ?
Adj Core - ?

NUJS, Kolkata - 20th to 22nd Jan
Prize Money - 1,20,000 INR
Adj Core: Siddharth Chauhan, Luwie, Arun Mal, Sinha Ibn Humayun, Uday Joshi

Polemic (Ramjas), Delhi - 28th to 31st January
Prize Money: ?
Adj Core: ?

Premchand (Hindu), Delhi - 3rd to 6th February
Prize Money - ?
Adj Core - ?


ProCon 2012 (VIT), Vellore - 2nd to 5th February
Prize Money - 60,000 INR
Adj Core - Aashay Sahay, Preethi Iyer, Ritwik 'Bucky' Chauhan

IIT Guwahati - 2nd to 5th February
Prize Money - 70,000 INR + Gift Vouchers
Adj Core - Vipul Nanda, Akshay BD

FTD (KMC), Delhi - 7th to 10th February
Prize Money - ?
Adj Core - ?

SRDF (SRCC), Delhi - 10th to 14th February
Prize Money - 2,00,000 INR (Including conventional debates)
Adj Core - ?

JGLS, Delhi - 15th to 18th February
Prize Money - ?
Adj Core - ?

PCTE Ludhiana, Punjab - 16th to 18th February
Prize Money - ?
Adj Core - ?

NUALS, Kerela - 17th to 19th February
Prize Money - ?
Adj Core - ?

QED (BITS, Pilani), Rajasthan - 18th to 20th February
Prize Money - ?
Adj Core - ?

Kremlin (JMC), Delhi - 21st to 24th February
Prize Money - ?
Adj Core - ?

CUPiD (Christ), Bangalore - 22nd to 26th February
Prize Money - ?
Adj Core - Sharmila Parmanand (More to be announced)

Manzar (Miranda House), Delhi - 24th to 28th February
Prize Money - ?
Adj Core - ?

Tashi (LSR), Delhi - 2nd to 5th March
Prize Money - ?
Adj Core - ?

MDO, Malaysia - 2nd to 6th March
Prize Money - ?
Adj Core - Logan, Uttara Gharpure, Satya Venugopal, Leloy Claudio

IIT Delhi - 6th to 9th March
Prize Money - ?
Adj Core - ?

Shanti Narayan (Hansraj), Delhi - 8th to 13th March
Prize Money - ?
Adj Core - ?

NLSD X, Bangalore - 29th March to 2nd April
Prize Money - 2,50,000 INR
Adj Core - Ely Zosa, Nishita Vasan (More to to be announced)

Please contact me about more tournaments that I have missed out. Also do let me have more information on the tournaments mentioned above.

Monash are World Champions ... Again

Amit Golder and Kiran Iyer (Monash B) became the fourth Monash team to speak at the WUDC Grand Finals from Opening Government since 2008. They were also the second to win it. They successfully defended the title won by Victor Finkel & Fiona Prowse at Botswana last year.

The finalists were:
OO: Stanford A (Michael Baer & Faris Mohiuddin)
CG: Oxford B (Steph Bell & Jen Coyne)
CO: Sydney B (Daniel Swain & Eleanor Jones)

The motion for the Grand Finals was "TH Supports Nationalism". It was a cracker of a debate with fine speeches from all 4 teams. The crowd largely were swayed by Sydney at Closing Opposition, but the Grand Finals panel were unanimously for Monash to take the Championship.

Monash also won the Championship in 1999 and 2000 and have become the first university to have defended the title twice. Oxford is the other institution to do so when in 2009, Will Jones and James Dray  successfully defended the title won by Samir Deger-Sen & Lewis Iwu the previous year. Monash now have 4 world titles behind joint leaders Glasgow and Sydney who have each won Worlds five times.

Amit Golder and Kiran Iyer first teamed up at WUDC in 2008. They performed strongly in the Australian circuit leading up to Worlds. They won the Melbourne Mini 2011 and the New Zealand IV 2011, with Amit Golder being awarded the best speaker in both competitions. He was also the best speaker at the Sydney Mini 2011 where they reached the Grand Finals, losing out to a team from Sydney (not Swain & Jones, who were finalists as well). At Manila, they broke 28th on the tab and were the highest team on 18 points. Only two of the speakers in the Grand Final finished in the top ten (Steph Bell & Michael Baer) and only Oxford B (#2) were seeded to reach the Finals.

Ben Woolgar (Oxford A) was the best speaker on the tab. Oxford A (EUDC 2011 Champions) were also the top team on the tab.

Watch the debate as taken by Al Snider on Vimeo.
Or watch it on Youku as taken by Zheng Bo.

The only Indian teams to participate in WUDC 2012 were NLU Delhi (Ambar Bhushan & Aayush Srivatsava) and NLIU Bhopal ( Rijoy Bhaumik & Bishen Jeswant). The NLU Delhi team was the champion of Nalsar IV, the first BP tournament in India. They finished at 13 points at position 210. NLIU Bhopal finished on 10 points at position 336. The full tabs can be seen here.

EDIT: The original post did not include NLIU Bhopal as a part of the Indian contingent. Thanks to Rishabh for the correction!

Parliamentary Debating in India

Over the course of the past three years, I have enjoyed being a part of the inspiring, vibrant and generally wonderful community of Indian Parliamentary Debaters. I have been a part of this community for a short amount of time, but in that time I have seen it grow from being centred in DU, Bangalore and the Law Schools of India to small number of buzzing circuits that are all keen to pursue PD in all its glory.

Of course, as the circuit grew, as did the general chaos within it. Today, there are debates every three days across the country and there is no single place where we can get information about it all. As we grow in size, I hope that we can organize ourselves to become genuine powerhouses in the Asian, and eventually the Worlds circuits. However, as of now, a large number of Indian debaters are not exposed to organized parliamentary debating outside India. With a greater awareness, I hope that people will stop viewing competitions outside India as opaque events which are alien to those held in our country, and start participating more.

I am creating this blog in a small attempt to gather and collate information about debating, debate tournaments and the general life of debating for debaters in India. I hope that this can become a resource for some in either looking up motions, or just following the different debates around the country.

I hope to have the support of the various debating institutions to get information to ensure that this blog can be as accurate as possible.