VIT emerges winner at HT centennial debate

Held at the Jio World Convention Centre, the four-hour-long event saw the city’s brightest young minds engage in a battle of wits and knowledge on the topic – the social media generation is more lost than found

Mumbai: Twenty-four of Mumbai’s best educational institutions battled it out on Wednesday morning in the second regional leg of the Hindustan Times centennial debate.

Mumbai, India. Jan 22, 2025: The winners of HT`s centenary debate, the top 20 colleges from Mumbai, participated in an inter-college Hindustan Times centenary debate at Jio World Convention Center in BKC, Mumbai. Mumbai, India. Jan 22, 2025. (Photo by Raju Shinde/HT Photo) (Hindustan Times)

Held at the Jio World Convention Centre, the four-hour-long event saw the city’s brightest young minds engage in a battle of wits and knowledge on the topic – the social media generation is more lost than found.

A team of Parth Gupta and Utkarsh Karmungikar from the Vidyalankar Institute of Technology, Mumbai were the team winners of Wednesday’s debate. They proceed to the national finals to be held in Delhi, along with Vivekanand Education Society’s Institute of Technology, comprising Preetika Khilnaney and Aditya Santosh. These two teams will join Ashoka University and OP Jindal Global University, who were the winners and runner-up respectively of the Delhi leg of the debate, in the national finale.

Mehar Kazi from Mithibai College was adjudicated the best speaker, followed by Utkarsh Karmungikar from the Vidyalankar Institute of Technology, and Preetika Khilnaney from the Vivekanand Education Society’s Institute of Technology.

The jury, comprising celebrated writer and lyricist Jaideep Sahni, leading lawyer and philanthropist Naheed Carrimjee, and influential advertising guru Agnello Dias, applauded the efforts of the nearly 50 debaters who held forth on issues as wide-ranging as misinformation, waning attention spans, cognitive functions, and social movements.

Sahni, the acclaimed writer of films such as Chak De India, Company, Bunty aur Babli, and Khosla Ka Ghosla among others, said the future of the country was in good hands.

“I was particularly heartened by the appreciation of the technical aspects of the subject by humanities students and the focus of the engineering and science students on the facets concerning humanity and society. Please take some time to reflect on some things the opposing side said that made a place in your heart,” he said.

Carrimjee, one of the founding partners of law firm Desai Desai Carrimjee and Mulla, who is also involved with many environmental projects and charities, said she was impressed with the research done by the students, as well as their willingness to listen and to question. “The ability to think and question and process and analyse is key to growth. I will hold out one piece of advice for you – to take some time and listen to the other side and analyse what they’ve said,” she said.

Dias, one of the most influential figures in contemporary Indian advertising and under whose leadership the country won the first Grand Prix and Titanium Lion at Cannes, encouraged young people to ask questions. “The future of this country is not dead when we don’t get answers, it is dead when we stop asking questions…the future lies in the fact that we continue to ask questions and debate…Never stop asking questions,” he said.

In her speech, Kazi from Mithibai College spoke about the positive impact of social media, especially in catalysing social movements, and underlined how overuse of social media could be limited by controls that were already available. In her speech, she said, “We try to shape a world where not only the man with the mic and a podium had the right to speak but also the little girl from her little village did. We try to shape a world where information and education need not always come with a hefty fee receipt. We try to shape a world where people are seen as a collection of diverse mindsets and opinions, not just a number on the census.”

Karmungikar from Vidyalankar Institute of Technology argued that social media was being falsely vilified. He said, “The employment avenues created by social media drive the economy more towards the formal sector from the informal, which greatly helps the low-middle income groups that make up the majority of the workforce in developing countries. Social media has led to a desensitisation of traditionally sensitive tragedies, with jokes and memes rife about tragic incidents, taking away the importance of the issue.”

The debate, which will next be held in Bengaluru, will culminate in a battle of India’s top speakers on the national stage, marking the extraordinary journey of Hindustan Times that turned 100 last year. Over the years, this paper acted as a mirror to India and offered its platform to great thinkers and leaders – Martin Luther King Jr, C Rajagopalachari, Rajendra Prasad, Eleanor Roosevelt, MS Swaminathan and Sachin Tendulkar among them. It blossomed from a circulation of merely 20 copies to becoming one of the most widely read papers in the country, reaching 73 million people every month.

The Hindustan Times Centennial Debate is a celebration of this journey that spans a century and straddles an extraordinary range – from a small band of men and women inspired by Mahatma Gandhi to battle brutal colonial censorship laws, to a globally respected voice chronicling the rise of the world’s largest democracy.