Pilot Pens BRAC National Novice 2016 - A Step in the Right Direction

You're on stage and you freeze. The words are there in your head somewhere, but all those eyes that are staring at you, there are these judges, well, judging you and that guy in the corner is definitely poking his nose, and nope, you can't seem to say a single bright thing. The bell rings, time's up, you sit down on your bench, team-mates patting you, a trickle of sweat running down your back and your relief at being away from that stage somehow overshadowed by this bigger sense of disappointment. Those were your minutes, and you wasted them. 

That's how debating starts for people. The exhilaration of a good speech, the adrenaline rush one gets from the applause for a nicely placed joke – these are all treasures you find later on in the scene. At first, it's just these first faltering moments, mostly losses, a random win and suddenly you know that you want this. You want to conquer this fear and be the king of it, and nothing, no one can stop you. 

At this crucial stage of a debater's life, entering a novice tournament, one in which you debate with similarly inexperienced debaters, can be an eye-opener. You can assess your capabilities with others, win and win well, and those can all fuel your passion.  

Pilot Pens BRAC National Novice is the first and only initiative in Bangladesh to bring out the best in novices and appreciate the unique growth spurts that one needs to go through to make it in an increasingly difficult debate scene. Hosted from the May 16-21, it brought together novice debaters of every type – school, university, mix of both – from Dhaka and Chittagong. The aim was to make it as open as possible so even someone without an institution could come groom themselves with the help of the best judges in the country and the most comprehensive, modern topics available. 

After four preliminary rounds, quarter-finalists were eliminated and the grand final was between Group of Debaters-1 as government and BUET-1 as opposition. Two hours and much deliberation later, the government, GOD-1, were the Champions of Pilot Pens BRAC National Novice 2016. Megh Mallar was the best speaker of the final and the overall tournament. 

The sign of a good debating nation is a strong novice debating scene; you need to make sure that you groom the future with the same effort as you do the present. Bangladesh has so far lagged behind in that, possibly because our novices seem to flow smoothly from this step to the next. Pilot Pens and BRAC finally introduced a much needed break in this blue ocean. One of the organisers, Souvik Saha, had this to say: "The tournament aimed at helping all those people who have just stepped into the colourful yet challenging world of debating. I hope our efforts have set examples for other institutions taking similar initiatives for the novice debaters in the future."

With this brilliant start, the novice debate scene of Bangladesh has a lot to look forward to.