YKA’s Debate Sees Indian Youth Engage With UN’s Development Goals

Youth Ki Awaaz, a digital forum for politically & socially conscious youth, held a debate on the United Nation’s SDGs

With the successful wrap-up of the United Nations’ summit on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), it’s left to the rest of us – thinkers, journalists, amateurs alike – to speculate on the country’s course and commitment to achieving these social, economic, political, and ecological causes. To this end, Youth Ki Awaaz, the country’s foremost digital forum for democratic debate among the youth, organised a debate on Monday at Lodhi estate’s WWF auditorium.

The debate, organised in association with Action/2015 and UN Volunteers, had as its motion the premise that a cut in the government’s social spending is essential to give the country’s manufacturing prowess the push that it needs. Team A and Team B, with three members apiece, were for and against the motion, respectively.

The Debate

The debate is one that anyone who has ever wandered within hearing distance of a ‘liberal’ university is familiar with. Team A argued that multiple surveys show that sixty years of governance on the model of a welfare state has bred nothing but inefficiency, waste of resources, and corruption. The three members held that resources cut from social spending and allocated to the manufacturing sector will have a trickle-down effect wherein more employment leads to more economic power which, in turn, feeds the consumer demand-supply chain, increasing the national GDP. And everyone lives happily ever after was the subtext.

Team B’s arguments followed similarly well-worn grounds. They argued that private corporations will have absolutely no incentive to invest in backward cities and the government will end up subsiding these ventures heavily. They further stated that pushing for growth of the manufacturing sector without developing a social bedrock (healthcare, education etc) will lead to mass migration of the unskilled rural poor to urban centres, which, in turn, will lead to severe stress on limited amenities in the city, and give rise to more urban squalor and slums. In a moment of supreme rhetorical flourish, they said that the answer to widespread hunger is not to build more McDonald’s.

Q&A

While the debate was quaint, conservatively academic and divorced from larger social and global realities, the question and answer session was a lively affair. The founders of YKA reiterated their dislike of prime-time TV-esque debates and promptly opened the floor to everyone. A critical audience member took the two teams to task for being too narrowly domestic in the debate which led to a more free-flowing discussion about the need to do away with the archaic capitalism/communism binary and embrace an evolving model of governance wherein governments and corporations try to find a common ground for the greater good.

The Human Drama

Don’t let the big political words fool you into thinking this was a dry affair. What unfolded on the stage was a veritable human drama. The first member of Team A began the debate by throwing sentences at the audience in a rapid-fire manner. Team B cleverly responded by sending their most measured speaker.

As the debate neared its end, the veneer of academic sportsmanship was abandoned in favour of open, but good natured, gawking at the thick-headedness of the opponent’s opinion and a lot of rueful head-shaking. My favourite moment was when, in the heat of rhetoric prowess, interjectors were cavalierly shushed and told to sit down. The organisers, of course, ensured that the debate ended in sporting handshakes and a communal avowal to be part of a politically and socially responsible youth population.

Also, for the curious, Team B won.