Jus Cultura, the literary, debating and quizzing society of the National Law Institute University is organising the 2^nd edition of its flagship event, the NLIU Debate from the 5^th to 7^th of October, 2013. The first national level parliamentary debate to be organised in Central India, this edition of the NLIU Debate is scheduled to run for 3 days with a total of 9 rounds of debating including the prelims, octa-finals, quarter-finals, semi-finals and the final. The first two rounds were held on the 5th with the remaining prelim rounds happening today. The post-break rounds are scheduled to happen tomorrow.

The debate has witnessed an outstanding participation 52 teams and 60 adjudicators, including some of the country’s top colleges across streams including St. Stephens College, Delhi University, National Law School of India University, Bangalore, Indian Institute of Management, Indore and Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur.

The Adj Core for the debate comprises of three debating stalwarts; RV College of Engineering alumnus Aashay Sahay, the NLSIU alumus Prabhat Kiran Mukherjee (fondly known as Baba) and the Delhi University alumnus Ritwik Agarwal. Assisting them upon our invitation is the accomplished debater and adjudicator Neelakshi from Hindu College, DU.

Deviating from the routine pattern of holding a demo debate in the “Parliamentary Fashion”, this year’s adjudication test witnessed, for the first time in NLIU, the “Iron Man Debate”. The difference essentially being that in the latter, unlike the usual Parliamentary Debate, 2 speakers take on the role of all 6 speakers. The heavily contested demo debate, with Sahay in the proposition and Baba in the opposition, on the motion of “whether the Grade Point Average system should be used as a cut off”(focus being on law schools), gave the adjudicators a healthy ground to compete on.

1st Round (Prelims)

The first round began with the theme of "Indian Politics" and the motions were:

1. Whether the citizenry of Delhi should elect Aam Aadmi Party in the upcoming State Assembly elections
   
   
2. Whether Rahul Gandhi was right in commenting upon the ordinance promulgated to protect the criminal politicians
   
   
3. Whether voters could be allowed to sell their votes to other voters
   
   

This round witnessed excellent debating on the current Indian political scenario, and the dynastical politics prevalent in the country today.

2^nd Round (Prelims)

Titled as “Gharelu”, this round came up with motions centered on the day-to-day life of an aam admi.

1. Whether the prevailing anti-dowry legislations, should be repealed
2. Whether the municipal bodies of every city, should be privatized
3. Whether the income tax levied on a citizen, should be replaced by expenditure tax

In an interesting match-up between the teams of Hansraj and Hindu colleges, debating on the motion of privatization of municipal bodies, apart from focusing on the public vs. private debate, the need for imparting a representative character to these bodies was questioned. The proposition team raised the argument that since, the nature of activities performed by municipalities is ‘provision of services’, politicization shall bring in an element of bias in its functioning.

In one of these debates the proposition instead of replacing income tax with expenditure tax, proposed to replaced it with wealth tax, and thus squirreled the motion. The opposition however, choosing not to challenge the definition, chose to continue with the original line of argument, resulting in two parallel debates. Between two other teams debating on the same motion, one of them, overflowing with sentimentality also quoted the Peepli Live song “Mehengai dayan khaye jaat hai”.

3rd Round (Prelims)

The motions of the 3^rd preliminary round focused on the importance of extra-curricular activities in the lives of professionals. And also on, whether the personal and professional progress of an individual affects his ability to debate.

In the highly ranked debate between St. Stephens College A and St. Stephens College B, the motion chosen was mooting vs. debating. In, what can be seen as, a bold attempt, the Prime Minister attacked debating on the prevalence of adjudicatory bias. Interestingly enough, they also put forth the argument that “law students are far better debaters”. (Stephens, we would like to thank you on behalf of all law schools!) A major part of the opposition’s defense rested on trashing the formality of moots, and hailing debates for widening the horizon of motions.

On the motion of whether to continue debating after graduation, in one of the debates, the opposition whip took the motion to a personal level, quoting a real-life incident where his first debate experience was against college graduates, none other than Baba and Aashay.

[06102013 17:54]

Hello people! 

With the fourth round just concluding and the teams preparing for the 5th round (which shall be a closed round) we are all set to witness the breaks, but before that, there shall be the (more than) necessary hindrance of a Break Night Dinner Party. Heh, dinner. :P

But just to recap the events of the 4th round the motion included banning of violent video games, whether or not you have a right to sell your sure-shot-getting-laid-seduction-formula and well, umm, lets say bestiality. There were closely fought or extremely hilarious rounds given the scope of interpretation of morality and sexuality that our vibrant debaters had to provide.

[06102013 20:00]

The  teams have arrived at Picnic@Kerwa for the Break Night Dinner. This lakeside restaurant has witnessed many parties organized by college for participating teams of various events. The breaks shall be announced in a while.

[06102013 21:30]

Breaking Teams:

St. Stephen's (x2)

St. Xaviers Cal (x2)

Hansraj

Rijul's Angel (Hindu College)

NLSIU (x2)

Surprise!!! (Hindu College)

Amity IP

Kirori Mal College

Bhole

D School Cross

Hindu College

ILS Pune

NUJS Cal

Top of Tabs was St. Stephens followed by St. Xaviers Calcutta.

Breaking Adjs 

Rahul Seth (NLUD), Tarang Tripathi (DU), Amil Bhatnagar (Hansraj), Sharada (MSRIT), Abeer (Hansraj), Divya (RML), Mehvish (Stephens), Ganesh (NLUO), Rishabh (Hindu), Arushi (Xaviers), Ateesha (Xaviers), Nishant (SLS Noida), Rushal (IITKGP), Harshita (Xaviers)

Also breaking were our internal adjs Krithika and Surabhi Singh.

[06102013 23:00]

[octa-final and quarter-final updates shall be done in a while]

[07102013 17:00]

SEMI FINALS!

So, its going to be an all DU show in Bhopal today evening 4 DU teams qualifying to the Semi-Finals. The match-ups are as follows:

D School Cross v. SURPRISE!!! (a DU cross-team)

Bhole (DU cross) v. KMC

[07102013 17:15]

In the first Semi we have DSE Cross on side proposition and Surprise on opposition debating whether employees can be terminated based on inappropriate facebook posts. Side prop is trying to utilize the argument that since companies retain a strong presence on facebook as a platform for promotion, the conduct of their employees on facebook will affect the image of the brand, much like in real world. Their argument seems to be that customer relations needs to be kept intact and for this moderation is required on facebook as well. They seem to believe that there is not much of a difference between the real and virtual world, but we'll have to see how well they go ahead to prove this point. In the mean time the leader of opposition has begun his speech and has taken up the staple arguments of individual liberty and freedom of expression and the sphere in which the company can exert its influence. They have also made another point that facebook conduct does not really affect the investor sentiments and as long as that's the case, there is no reason why the companies should interfere.

Meanwhile in the other round also we have the same debate going on. This one seems to be a little more interesting with better argumentation on display and the teams are engaging really well. Side prop is running a case on how a companies image is extremely important and how such image today is not dependant only on the market performance or their products but extent to every aspect of the companies behaviour. This argument has been established really well by these guys citing examples of MNCs like Coke and KFC who are being criticized for their bad policies with regard to Human Rights and environment. The LO has put up a basic question as to whether the employees are spokespersons of the company, and whether the company has any legitimate claim to terminate them based on their conduct in the virtual world. The contract of employment surely doesn't support this move, seems to be their case.

[07102013 17:21]

Haha, the DPM in the first matchup has brought up the promiscuity of Sidharth Mallya into question and how it has affected Mallya Saab’s business empire. Well, it’s very true that ever since the boy has surfaced, daddy has been having a bad time. Maybe we just unraveled the reason behind all of his woes. Opposition in the other rooms is still explaining how an employee has a life outside of his company, and the distinction between professional and personal lives.

[07102013 17:40]

PIKA PIKA! Bhole's whip has emphatically proclaimed that FB is the PokeDex of today, causing the generally docile Baba to LOL his backside off. "Facebook is the most legit source of info about people and so what's said on it is also LEGIT!" appears to be the bottom line of their case. In the other room, the prop whip is summarising their case which is essentially that FB is a platform for the companies to project themselves and engage with customers, and therefore the employees have an obligation not to harm the company, through inappropriate actions on it. On the other side, the Opp has brought up the case of Tiger Woods and Nike and is arguing that Nike still runs well post the sex scandal, and hence a company is dependent only on its products, and nothing else. "If you are having sex with your wife, one doesn't think that your company is having sex with your wife". Erm, makes sense(?).

[07102013 17:00] 

Its Bhole (St. Stephen's Cross) v. SURPRISE! (Hansraj Cross) in the finals and the motion before the house is "THS the ban on smoking in public places". It's SURPRISE on side proposition and Bhole on the opposition. The debate started off with side government attacking smoking in public spaces as it leads to passive smoking for the general public, and how this is a deterrent to people going to public places. They stressed on the moral duty of the state and also about stigmatization, which later turned out to be the most important theme of the debate. Akshay Raghupaty, the LO, started his speech calling passive smoking a "lie", saying that the atmosphere intervenes and nullifies the effect. So, "cancer, cancer, cancer" is an argument which stands. Opposition relied heavily on personal liberty, and how the state is supposed to be a minimalist institution, not intervening in the way a person chooses to live. The debate was fairly clearly swaying towards the opposition from the very beginning, and the prop case failed to gain much ground at any stage. All in all a very entertaining debate, the motion fell by a unanimous vote.

[07102013 19:00]

The valedictory ceremony of the 2nd NLIU Debate ended in a grand fashion. It was a true testament to the amount of fun all the participants and organisers have had in the course of the last three days. There were speeches by the Director of NLIU, Dr. S.S. Singh and the chief guest Dr. Balram Gupta, from the National Judicial Academy: the audience was inspired by the very same, as it took them back to a time where debates were conducted very differently, and they spoke if how debating in India has evolved and reminded them how content and logic truly are, to put it simply, everything. The night ended with the announcements of results. The St. Stephen's Cross Team, popularly known as "Bhole", consisting of Jagat Sohail, Akshay Raghupaty and Nomaan Hassan won the Best Team, and Nomaan, from Hindu College, won Best Speaker as well. The Best Adjudicator award went to Rahul Seth from NLU-D.

Update Courtesy: Raghavi, Rajeshwari, Divya