Zee Entertainment’s Mind Wars’ First Mumbai Debate won by #ArvindLyengar from #BombayScottishSchool-Powai!

After over a month long eventful days filled with anticipation, excitement and thrill, Mind Wars Mumbai Debate Championship 2021, moderated by well known food critic #KunalVijaykar and organised by #ZeeEntertainment’s Mind Wars, India’s biggest knowledge platform for school students, finally culminated on 18th November 2021 in Rang Mandir Auditorium at Mumbai. Arvind Iyengar from Bombay Scottish School – Powai was announced the winner of the championship and was presented the award by well-known actor, author, and film producer, Tisca Chopra.

Kaamya Karthikeyan from Navy Children School, Colaba was declared the 1st Runner-up of the competition.

With more than 350 students from over 150 schools across the Mumbai Metropolitan Region participating in this competition, this was the first time the city witnessed a debate championship held at such a grand scale. Arvind, the winner of the championship, besides winning the prize money, has also been presented with an opportunity to participate and represent India in the World School Debating Championship taking place in 2022.

The competition was scheduled in four phases with the first two phases comprising evaluation through written submissions and then an evaluation of speech videos submitted by the students. The top 32 students selected from the video round competed in a zonal championship knockout round in phase three from where the top two students from each zone were selected for the final round. The last phase involved the city championship quarterfinal, semi-finals, and ultimately the final battle.

“With cities slowly recovering from the effects of the pandemic, I am delighted that our team at Mind Wars has received such an overwhelming response from the teachers and students community to conduct such on-ground initiatives,” said Mr. Umesh Kr Bansal, Executive Vice President, Zee Entertainment Enterprises Limited. “Children today are missing the extracurricular activities and group interactions that they would otherwise have under normal circumstances. Through initiatives like the debate championship, we aim to empower children with knowledge-based alternatives equipping them to become street smart, which helps them take on any situation in life. I look forward to seeing how opinions are shaping out amongst the school-going youngsters.”

Mr. Bansal further stated, “Debate basically benefits the overall personality development and growth of an individual which includes building perspective in the way a person should think. Debating done on stage requires quick thinking with a quicker response but with a bit of diplomacy and a balance in an individual so that they coherently put their thoughts together and respond on a particular topic. The fact that debaters must speak in favor or against a motion randomly also means the person is able to look at different viewpoints on the same subject. In the long run, this enables a person to structure his/her thoughts and get better in decision making and this in turn can help in their professional life, academic as well as their career.”

Mind Wars, in an attempt to enhance their critical thinking skills among students, is also looking at conducting such initiatives in other parts of the country and even holding pan-India competitions in the future.

The brainchild of Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd (ZEEL), Mind Wars has more than 1.8 million subscribers with its reach of over 20 million students across the country making it the largest and a first-of-its-kind knowledge acceleration programme in India. This debate is an initiative by Zee Entertainment in association with the Indian Schools Debating Society.