HYDERABAD: With an aim to facilitate thought and opinion exchange, a Bengaluru-based media company TV House Network held Verbattle, a platform for dialogue and debate for school children.
Their South-edition called Verbattle South was held on Thursday at the Sundaraiah Vignan Bhavan, wherein 10 teams from Global International School, Chirec, Obul Reddy, Rose Buds and Jubilee Hills Schools participated.
The topics for the debate were, “Aishwarya’s baby girl will not make any difference to the life of an ordinary girl child in India”, “There is no culture without civic sense” and “Greed is a positive emotion”.
The various debate topics were listed on Verbattle’s website for students to prepare, prior to the competition.
However, they had to pick up a chit just before the contest.
Rajeev Mathews, an advertising professional and Dr Samuel Sushant were on the jury panel and the students were judged on originality, their belief in their statements, presentation, preparation and team work.
Project manager of Verbattle South, Devi Kalmady said, “The students spoke really well and a lot of them did believe in what they said.
One of the topics of greed being a positive emotion, students were actually in favour of it and spoke in a very matured way.” She also explained, “The event will have ten teams from four sectors — Kochi, Chennai and Pondicherry, Hyderabad and Bengaluru - competiting for the quarter, semi-finals and finals at Bengaluru, to be held on January 24 and 25.” A cash prize of `1 lakh will be given to the winning team.
There will also be awards for State Zonal Best Teams and Mentor Award.
Verbattle is also associated with the International Debate Education Association (IDEA), Global Debates, an initiative of the United Nations and World Debate Institute