Ideas are born and thoughts are provoked at the unlikeliest of instances but one place where they were sure to happen was at the Dr. A.L. Mudaliar Oratorical Contest at CLRI, that took place last week. Originally instituted in 1968, the contest saw participation from seven colleges with maximum registration from AC College of Technology.
Thought-provoking topics
All 19 contestants had to speak on topics that drew from the recent Copenhagen summit, cricket, ‘racial' attacks in Australia, US' Health Bill, and even on general subjects like politics, science, heath and environment.
P. Saravanan, Scientist, CLRI, one of the two who were responsible for the topical questions said, “We were asked to come up with topics that were contemporary and socially relevant. These are the subjects that have the ability to impact the youth now or in the future giving us an idea of their opinion on a wide spectrum of topics”.
The contestants' attempts were indeed worthy of appreciation, because addressing a crowd comprising your competitors and judges who are scrutinising every word that you are uttering is no easy task.
But the few who had good ideas and could express themselves while holding the audience's attention too were declared the winners.
Winners
They were — M. Kavea from Jeppiar Engineering College (Winner), Ram Nishanth B. (Runner-up) and Nagalakshmi J. (Second runner-up), both from Rajalakshmi Engineering College. Nazia Jassim from WCC was awarded a consolation prize. Their prizes included a citation and a cash award.
Kavea's bold assertion that though science had come a long way and has the potential for change, it is man who is misusing it, made her the deserving winner.
Meanwhile, Nishanth casually put it that it is okay to be obsessed with the good in response to his topic ‘Are we obsessed with the administrative system bequeathed from the British?' Nagalakshmi impressed the judges with her knowledge of the Copenhagen Summit and her analysis of what went wrong with it.
The judges, writer/filmmaker Amshan Kumar, Subramanian Karthik, Head Operations, Odyssey and Sumathi Rajesh, Regional Head for Quality, Wipro, agreed that this was a great platform for ideas and budding orators who had the potential to make a change. You couldn't agree more because looking back, you do realise that you were set thinking about the lack of unified fundamental law in our country, as pointed out by a contestant — “While consuming liquor is illegal in the city, a few hundred kilometres down the road it's legal!”
