Sample GD Topics and Possible Arguments

You have read about GD techniques, dos and donts and much more in your courses and from your faculty. In this article we will take a GD topic and explore arguments and counter arguments. You think over it, if you do have some points just tell me in comments, justified your points & if you want me to reply you leave back your email id. A good discussion will try to arrive at a solution that shows balance. You need to demonstrate your understanding of the issue from more than one perspective alone. The conclusion at the end should indicate a filtration of more relevant issues & recommendation for policies/ changes that can be made in current system.

Tip to increase scope of your thinking:

Read a lot is only mantra to improve knowledge, understanding and interpreting given passage. Reading books will help you to get writers views, perceptions, thinking. But when you read a novel don't just read it for sake of fun or to pass time but while reading note down words which you can not understand. Try to guess their meanings on your own, by context. Then use a lexicon. After reading one chapter or one scene in novel try to write down summary of that part. This will help you to let you know whether you got the meaning or not, that writer wants to convey.

Should capital punishment be abolished?

A. In favour of abolition 1. Man is supposed to be a rational animal. But can a rational being kill a man for a man? No. because it would be savage & barbarous. Besides, by killing a murderer the dead cannot be brought backto life, nor would he or his famaly be compensated. So instead we should reform a killer, make him realise his sin & follow a virtuous life. 2. If we kill the murderer his troubles are over. But his family is made suffer for no fault of theirs. We should instead give him other punishment, say, for example, life imprisonment so that he has to face his own conscience & repent for what he has done.Alongside, he should be given psychological treatment & an opportunity to lead a normal citizen's life.

3. Instances are many where instead of being given capital punishment to even hardened criminals, they were just imprisoned or put in a reformatory with result that they realized & regretted their wrong doings, their term of sentence were reduced as a reward. Such acts enebled them to serve their innocent families & they even turned towards social work.This shows their capital punishment is not only remedy to take care of criminals. 4. We observe today that inspite of capital punishment being very much there on the statue, heinous crimes are not decresing. It goes to show that capital punishment is not detterent of criminals. Therefore, we must think of changing the method of punishment. Over 30 countries in the world abolished capital punishment but none has reported any increase in crime. So death punishment is not justified in any sense. 5. The reason capital punishment should be abolished is based on the fact that sometimes judgments go wrong, and, consequently innocent people are hanged. This is because of legalistic juggling of clever lawyers. Even otherwise instances are nto rare when current police officials are brought over through money and political power to file patently cooked up chargesheet in courts and magistrate in turns pass doubtful judgement. The only way to preclude the possibility of error is to abolish capital punishment itself. 'Benefit of doubt' is an important point of law & rightly so because law holds that 99 guilty can go unpunished but even one innocent should not be punished. In same spirit our suprime court has held death penalty should be awarded only in 'rarest or the rare case'. 6. We have no right to destroy what we cannot create. It is for god to give or take one's life. Mercy is higher in his life than punishment. It is barbarous to hold the doctrine of " thooth for thooth " and " limb for limb". B. Against Abolition 1. The time is not yet ripe to abolish capital punishment. There is no letup in crimes. Capital punishment is an effective detterent for would be offenders or murderers. Those who argued that despite of capital punishmentbeing thete on the statue bookcrime is on the increase fail to understand that it is because of our faulty justice delivery system where justice delayed is justice denied, and not the other way round. 2. There are certain kind of hardened criminals who are beyond reform. It is futile to teach them sanity. Killing other has become thier second nature and they have dozens of murder cases pending on them. It would only be for good of society that they are sent to the gallows thus their career on crime is stopped.

3. If a murderer is not put to death but instead allowed to live on, he is tempted to repeat the crime in future. It is often happens that murderer set at large through

police connivance or legal trickery of lawyer indulge in more heinous crime for fun or contract killing until they are caught or killed.

4. In some countries like pakistan, iran, dubai where laws are rigid and even petty criminals are awarded harsh punishment, crime is rare. Similarly in facist countries where death penalty is awarded for negligence of duty or other offences, efficiency & honesty is found in abundance. Jawahar lal nehru once favoured capital punishment for blackmarketeers as well.

Some More GD topics with Arguments

1. Are we raising a generation of burnt out children? For: * The reason for pushing the children hard today is to nurture them to face the competitive world tomorrow. * Developing talent is not a sin, it will help the child in his future. * It is a trickle down effect from the kind of competition experienced for entry into engineering colleges, graduation and others. Against: * The basic needs of childhood are, time to play, place to play and explore the world through his eyes. * In the name of competition we are raising fatigues children. * The stress is resulting into children engaging in all kinds of derogative acts. 2. Advertising is all glitter and little truth. For: * Advertising is a business and not charity. Companies hire advertisers for their promoting their products and it is not vice versa. * Advertisers have to depict what the customers like, enjoy keeping in mind the clients requirements. * As the products increase and so the ads, glitter is a way to ensure brand recall, a very important factor for the advertising firms. Against: * Advertising firms carry responsibility of providing customers with unbiased information about products. * In order to have a healthy bottom line the ad firms cannot shun their responsibility towards the society. * Ad firms have to develop the ethical content into their processes to ensure fair deals.

3. Is bureaucracy a hindrance to economic reforms in India? For: * As the laws have not changed significantly, bureaucrats still play a major role in the process of a business. * The way to successfully implement the reforms is to reduce the amount of paperwork and red tape involved. Against: * Bureaucracy is a necessity no doubt, to have control over the activities of the private sector. * Rules and regulations that are laid down have to be implemented and the masses have to be looked after which is not possible without the help of bureaucrats. * As a company requires people to run the business, government also requires bureaucrats to run its affairs. 4. Film-makers are indulging in cinematic Fortitution in the name of folk culture. For: * Movie released in theaters is a result of what the producer and director along with his crew put together. The producer being the investor and the director the creator it is left to them to decide what they want to create and produce. *The producer and the director take a gamble trying to woo the crowd by showing what they want. * Current trend in movies is towards folk culture, which may fade away soon. Against: * If the movie is on folk culture then it should elucidate the beauty of the culture and there should not be any masala added to lure the audience. * Folk culture is to be preserved in its natural and an inheritance should not be used to make money out of it by depicting the same in movies. 5. Under Indian parliamentary democracy it is impossible to ensure balanced regional development. For: * The fundamental principles of democracy preach to ensure balanced regional development. * Uniform representation in the Lower House by MPs from all over the country is to bring out regional problems and demands of people from across the country. Against: * The government tends to be biased towards vote banks while making and implementing policies. * The minorities are usually left out in the power game and all the agitation by various minorities is an example of the lopsided development.

6. Corruption is the main outcome of democracy in India. For: * The fact that the system provides equality to everyone, from whatsoever background and competency makes it easier to play around loopholes in the Indian Statute Against: * The risk of Democracy is a systemic risk ; corruption is a personal equation and holds good or bad depending on an individual's and organization's personal value systems. The two should therefore not be construed/ read as a cause- effect relationship. 7. In an over-regulated society corruption is inevitable. For: * This is a clear case of the economic phenomenon of regulatory arbitrage; simply put, laws are made to be broken Against: * Regulations , like democracy is a systemic phenomenon ; corruption is a personal equation and holds good or bad depending on an individual's and organization's personal value systems. The two should therefore not be construed/ read as a cause- effect relationship 8. for the poorer sections of society, a state controlled economy is better than a liberalized economy. For: * A controlled economy will result in proper flow of benefits towards the rural masses. * The state has control over the production and the markets helping the poorer sections to avail benefits which they otherwise would have been deprived of. Against: * The communist countries are a bright example that state controlled economies do not result in uplifting the poor. * As history stands a proof state controlled economies have higher rates of corruption and mismanaged economies. * A liberalized economy with sound regulatory framework will ensure employment and a healthy economy.

9. The money being put into cricket is harming the development of other sports. For: * Getting sponsored to other sports is difficult, and the players could not have the latest equipment (sport gears). * Cannot not compete with other countries Against: * Department of sports or the Sports ministry has a fixed budget and has to allocate the same to productive use. If the demands from cricket are high the dept. has no other option but to fund them. * The number of aspiring cricketers speaks for itself how popular a game it is in the nation. * A lot of funding also comes from sponsors who will fund the game that gives them maximum publicity and in India cricket is no doubt the game. 10. You want to be one of the 6 persons in the ship (out of 7) who are to survive. State your case. One has to take up a particular profession and argue why and how it is important to the society and states that as the reason for survival.

11. Democracy has hampered India's progress Please refer to similar topics above. The topic requires you to talk on the development that the nation has achieved over the past 50 odd years.

12. The Recession has not had a drastic effect on India's trade.

13. Indians lack a sense of social responsibility This topic does not require any elucidation; all of you know what to speak about this topic.

14. Open book examination system would eliminate all the ills of present system. For: * The advantage derived by students copying from various sources will be wiped out. * The teachers will be forced to ask questions that demand more analytical skills and not just test the memory power of students. Against: * It will affect the memory power * New ideas may not be generated

15. Women's empowerment will lead to social development For: * when you empower women, you empower a family. * Major influence on the children and thus the society. Against: * No direct connection. * Will lead to nuclear families and split homes. 16. Computers result in unemployment For: * Computers replace a lot of jobs. * A developing country like India cannot afford to have computerization at the cost of unemployment. Against: * In a Knowledge and service economy computers are a necessity and a must for development. * They create more jobs and types of jobs and also have multiplier effect. 17. with IT replacing middle level management, soft-ware jobs are more lucrative than MBAs IT is not replacing middle level management, but it is replacing the in-efficiency in an organization. It also results in transparency and provides information on time as and when required. One can't compare the two stated above; its like comparing apples to oranges.

18. Do you think accent holds you back? Would you prefer everyone speaking uniformly? For: * Communication between people of different languages will be faster and easier. * No politicization of language base issues. Against * With different languages in India, it is difficult to have same accent. * It is a personal issue, everybody has a right to speak his mother tongue. * Hindi and English are serving as the bridge for the variety of languages we have and there is no need to force a common language. 19. Men resent women power at work place For: * Hard to shake off the age old male ego * Men find it hard to obey women bosses * Doubt whether women can make good managers Against * It is women who avoid power and responsibility at work 20. Youth in India are becoming greedy by the day For: * Want to earn a fast buck * Want to imitate the successful young achievers Against: * Ambition is being misunderstood for greediness.

21. MBAs should be taxed at higher rates in the country For: * understandably so in the areas of income and wealth taxes, given their propensity to earn higher through these routes. Against: * Taxation is a policy and policies are decided for the masses at large. In order to avoid any discrepancy and bias rates are fixed on income and not on the basis of profession. * MBAs and other such professional people are taxed "professional tax". So charging them again a higher rate is not required.

GD Topics

India should not aspire to be a nuclear super power Bureaucracy is root cause of India's social and economic problems. Do B-Schools make business leaders or mere managers. TV Commercials should be banned Politics and economics go together Winning is not the important thing, it is the only thing It is all the fault of the politicians We need more management schools than primary schools The medium of teaching in schools should be English Efficiency and corruption go hand in hand Advanced mathematics is of no use in every day life Welcome back socialism To survive in a civilized world one needs to be a hypocrite