Verbattle is now in its seven year. In the nine competitions these six years have seen, the process of selection and winning has evolved into what has now become a standard Verbattle structure of preliminary and final selection.
Basically the performance of each team is marked based on the judges’ evaluation and the audience reaction. In Verbattle, though audience reaction does more or less influence the judges’ decisions, there have been instances where teams that have scored with the audience have failed to impress the judges and eventually did not make it to the finals.In three consecutive years of the competition, the most popular (with the audience) team in the Zonal Skirmish segment did not make it to the finals.
Verbattle judges are usually working professionals who normally come with limited time and limited patience and a sense of detachment making them less tolerant of indiscipline and of digression and lack of preparation. They tend to go straight into the heart of the matter- content and the appeal of the argument.
Unfortunately, sometimes arguments tend to touch the listener/judge emotionally. In spite of guidelines many a time judges have reacted emotionally to the arguments presented and marked the teams accordingly.
Once when asked why a certain team was selected in spite of the team not understanding the statement they were arguing in favour of, the judges unified response was that they liked the confidence of the participants and selected the team purely on the basis of their performance.
A salient feature of Verbattle is that the children, especially the winning teams, have been well behaved, soft spoken and non aggressive. There has been an exception though- of the two children in the winning team of Verbattle 2008 one spoke in a loud voice, and argued emphatically, but the team won. The judges were torn between this team and another which evidently had better arguments but was less aggressive. The decision went in favour of the former team, the judges taking into particular consideration the fact that the team members were very young compared to the other two teams.
Contrary to the selection round, in the debates of the state level stages the judgment is more dependent on the content than the performance. If all three teams are found equal then the decision is purely subjective and in some cases surprising. Still the question remains -with all the content and substance why do some teams fail to make it? In one case the audience was baffled with the result and the losing team was moved to tears but the judges’ explanation was that the team had poor body language, there was no physical expression of their conviction, no movement of the hands nor was there any facial expression.
There are teams that are very good, almost flawless articulation and factually strong. But ultimately a debate is not an activity in isolation; it is an appeal to be heard, to be understood, to be believed and to be reacted to. The whole process is defeated if the debater fails to appeal since the appealing happens to a very human audience who have the option to not listen to the argument. It is a tough task for the debater to hold the judges’ and audience’s attention. Though judges are expected to concentrate and be patient, it is impossible for them to pay undivided attention for three to four hours to arguments they need not necessarily be interested in, however committed they are to the cause of Verbattle.
The mentor and support group of a particular losing team said that they had instructed the team to abide strictly by the onstage conduct rules and hence the team had performed in an understated manner. Verbattle rules state that one cannot make loud gestures, move about the stage, draw unnecessary attention to physical actions and not scream or shout. These rules should not stop any debater from making the debate lively and the argument more expressive; using hands to make relevant gestures that are acceptable as normal, and help to make the presentation interesting and delightful for the audience’s eyes cannot be objected to or be seen as unacceptable by any rule or standard. What is not allowed is table thumping, flailing hands, shouting and any other action construed as loud or unruly; a good speaker is expected to know the importance of physical gestures and communication expressed by body language.
A speaker at a higher level of a Verbattle competition feels justified about his argument and its content. Caught in a debate the teams sometimes fail to monitor themselves and the track of their arguments. Even going off the track even once or twice in the whole debate can attract disdain from the panel of judges who may become uninterested in listening to the argument any further, however good the subsequent performance may be. When the debate is about ‘Indians lacking a sense of beauty’, the arguments could veer towards talking about ‘how beautiful India is’, even with the teams actually starting off by speaking about ‘sense of beauty’. The argument may sound good but is actually totally off and away from the topic, though the linking word throughout the debate is ‘beauty’ in this case.
Audience reaction can be deceptive. A participating team with sufficient friends among the audience may get more cheers and encouragement and every line of argument by them could be accentuated by applause or acceptance by the audience and that may unfortunately lead the team into believing that their performance was the best. One particular mentor -teacher raised objection to howling and loud cheering by a section of the audience because she was ‘scared’ that howling and loud cheering could influence the judges.The curious thing here is that the team which was cheered the most did not even reach the Combat stage, leave alone winning the competition.
Finally, Verbattle should be understood as an activity happening in a human society without too many rules to restrict either the debates, the audience or the judgment. Human beings normally understand and appreciate things by taking the sum total of all the factors that influence them in a particular situation. If one does not have the ability to understand and take advantage of the different and individual factors then the only way one should accept the judgment is by blaming it on luck. For anyone who has observed Verbattle closely, there is indeed a pattern and science to the pattern; only the taking advantage of that science has not yet been achieved.
