62ND ANNUAL MUKARJI MEMORIAL DEBATE 2010

REPORT FOR NLIUA (APURV MISHRA and SARABJEET SINGH)

RESULT: At the end of 5 preliminary rounds, NLIU-A had a record of 4 wins and 1 loss. As a result, we broke into the quarter-finals but lost to NLS-A. LIST OF MOTIONS The Mukarji Memorial Debate had different themes for each round of the debate: 1. Pakistan THIS HOUSE WOULD NOT HOLD TALKS WITH PAKISTAN UNLESS IT ACTS ON 26/11 TERROR SUSPECTS 2. Economics THIS HOUSE BELIEVES THAT STUNDENTS AVAILING OF GOVERNMENT SCHOLARSHIPS MUST BE MANDATED TO WORK IN INDIA FOR A STIPULATED PERIOD OF TIME 3. Science and Technology THIS HOUSE BELIEVES THAT GOOGLE SHOULD STOP FILTERING FOT CHINA 4. Religion This house believes that educational institutions should change their motto from Glory of God to Death of God. 5. Prisoners This house would publish the name and location of repeat sex offenders. 6. Literature ( quarter-finals)

SUMMARY OF DEBATES MOVs were calculated on the basis of difference of speakers scores between the two teams. MATCH 1: Won Against KMC-A (Government) MATCH 2: Won Against ILS (Government) MATCH 3: Won Against NALSAR-A (Government) MATCH 4: Lost Against Hindu-C (Opposition) MATCH 5: Won Against LSR (Opposition) Quarter-finals: Lost Against NLS-A (Government) CASE DESCRIPTIONS and ANALYSIS: Match 1: In this match, the Prop defined the House as the GOI and spoke of the importance of ensuring that Pakistan acts on the 26/11 terror suspects. We won the case by establishing that 26/11 is not the be-all and end-all of Pakistan sponsored terrorism and much more is left wanting from Pakistan apart from acting on 26/11.

Match 2: won In this match, we defined the House as the house of 6 rational people and stipulated that it was not worth hosting the Olympics for any developing country. We argued that hosting has never been profitable (by citing previous examples), it leads to wastage of resources which could be used for developmental activities, only the hosting city benefits which is already more developed than other cities, corruption is rampant and highlighted that a sports culture would prevail in a country no matter where our athletes did well, so hosting Olympics was not necessary. Opposition raised points about pride of country, development of infrastructure and inspiration to youth. Match 3: In this match, we defined the House to be House of rational people who hold freedom of thought, expression, etc as paramount. We then laid the case as looking at whether Google should stop filtering for China from that perspective. The single Chair was annoyed at the manner in which we had defined the House and had his sympathies with the Opposition. Match 4: lost In this match, government defined the House as 6 rational people and spoke of how religion has instilled misguided notions about our world and it has acted as a barrier to scientific development. We forwarded our case on the basic theme of how religion only provides a temporary explanation of unknown phenomenon and religion takes a backseat when science provides a more logical explanation. We still lost because according to the adjudicator, the motion talked about changing from a positive extreme to negative extreme and merely defending the current motto was not enough and we had to also show why the other negative extreme should not be adopted. Match 5: won In this match, the Prop defined the House as the House of Rational people in France. They spoke about greater propensity of repeat sex offenders to commit such a crime and hence the need of society to be warned against them and how societal sanctions acts as motivation for reforming oneself. They wanted to keep a tab on such people for 5 years. We successfully attacked their case by showing that publishing their names and location amounts to double punishment, it would make their rehabilitation more difficult and pointed the logistical difficulties in monitoring thousands of sex offenders across the country. We questioned their time period of 5 years and suggested that repeat sex offenders should instead be cured by offering them counselling during their prison time. Match 6:

SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPROVEMENT We conclude the report by making suggestions for improvement in performance of the teams that participate in various Parliamentary debates. A. More More More experience. We need to allow our debaters to gain far more experience than we currently allow them to. B. Send more adjudicators for DU debates

C. Round-the-year practise is needed in our college with motions focused on current issues D. Our understanding of a good case by the government is flawed. We need to learn how to make tighter, more logical cases as government. E. Our debaters need to stop squirrelling as a habit. It can be used as a surprise tool in some tricky motions but to do it continually is neither well appreciated by the debating community nor does it improve us as debaters.