Teacher's Day Special: For and Against Competition for UPSC Aspirants | Shankar IAS Academy | Part 2

The suspense was intense and the debate was very immersive. That was a truly engaging and intellectually stimulating debate. My compliments to all the participants. Continuing in the same spirit, we now proceed for the for and against program where our students will present opposing viewpoints on a given topic. This segment will be assessed by our esteemed jury members Mr. Manigandan sir, Mr. Vijay sir and Mr. Rajkumar sir. I request our jury members to place uh please take their seats and now we'll call upon participants one by one and first would be Miss Gayatri check a very good good morning sorry a very good afternoon to one and all present here to I'm Gri Narayan and I will be speaking the foreign against competition topic on whether AI is becoming a bane or boon to the humanity. First arguing that AI is becoming a bane to the humanity. The very fact that today on this dis we are discussing on the topic that AI is whether becoming a bane or boon to the humanity itself is a signal that how far a has the potential to become a bane to our humanity. Apart from joblessness and layoff that has resulted from AI, I would also like to highlight a major important concern, social legal concern as a result of AI. One, the misinformation. How AI is spreading misinformation in multiffolds and how we can imagine. Firstly, many people are depending on AI for medical opinion, legal opinion, including mental health opinion. And nearly one in every five individual according to NIH report of 2025 suggests that lot of individual between the age group of 15 and 22 are resorting to AI for mental health advice. And this is where we have to think that while AI can reply to our prompts, it cannot read our minds. It cannot read our emotion. And that is where we require and that is where I say that AI is becoming a bane to the human existence. Moving on, A is also creating other legal concerns like how it is breaching the privacy of the individuals, how it is breaching the uh artistic value. For example, the Jubilee trend that was on trend two one and a half years back. how it has undermined the artistic value and the uh uh efforts behind an artist. Similarly, how AI is also uh has far-reaching consequences on biases, creating biases. The Amazon hiring tool in 2018 is an example. And moving on to the final concern of environmental concern. According to the MIH report of um 2018 itself, it has found that AI training an AI bot is can emit as carbon as five cars in its lifetime. So of course AI is becoming a bane to the human existence. Thank you. Now I will also speak for how AI is becoming a boon for the human uh existence. So to begin with AI has created a lot of opportunity for us not only in creating employment, not only in improving efficiency but in this era were catastrophic events like calamities uh uh the floods that have happened in Nepal has indicated that what we require is not only an efficient uh early warning system but also speedy that is early warning system and AI can enable this early warning system and uh Indian materological department has already if I may take uh 30 seconds. Yes, thank you. And Indian materological department has already has equipped AI enabled forecasting tools that can generate the warning system that not only helps to the people. The AI is not only helping people in the office desk but also helping the farmers to predict the monsoon weather but also predicting when they can sew the seeds and also AI is also helping people in connecting uh the bridging the gap between public and public service. Example, the bashing app developed by the Indian government is providing a realtime translation services to around 22 languages and that is how it is also making efficient uh development in governance. uh by stating this I am also stating that though a is a double-edged sword it has the potential of not only uh continuing the existence of human society but it also in improving the efficiency of the human society and that depends upon how we use it and how we controls it. Thank you honorable chief guest and my fellow participants uh and the dear audience. Good afternoon to everyone. and I am Purima and I'm going to speak about uh the usage of social media is it making us less social. So I want to say that uh when we are uh restricted, we cannot travel to multiple places or we cannot interact with so many people. We are uh we are locked in a single room. Especially for girls, there are certain restrictions like safety and so much things and we cannot look for job opportunities. There are uh transport issues and everything. With all of those restrictions, if we can communicate with other people, work from home, all of these things are possible because of social media. We are uh we can connect with people from global platforms for job opportunities for uh seeking expert guidance. For example, I would say uh that we did not know much about the languages or uh culture or traditions of people from different countries. But when we interact with people on social media, for example, I learned a lot with my friends uh from Australia and New Zealand about their culture, about their country and the problems that they're facing through social media than through any other platforms or books. I learned about the uh problems of uh North Korea or Afghanistan. Those are some countries that we cannot get inside, right? We can get inside but uh it's problematic when we have to get out, right? So uh we learned so much about other countries. We learned about uh the crisis and it helps us to get awareness about all the issues and organize people for a social cause. But are we really using social media only for the positive outcomes? So how many people here would be having a fake social media account? uh with the amount of loss I can understand that many people do have and are we using it for a positive cause? No, we usually use it for u spreading hate uh talking jealousy or u just criticizing uh a person or a celebrity. All right. Social media was initially uh created to make all of us social but you see a family dinner or everyone around here instead of listening to the speech or the debate people are very much focused on their own phones. It is making us less social because we are very much uh we are very much u concentrating on ourselves on what what's happening around us. When we look at social media we see all the post it gives us a dopamine hit. We think that it is making us productive. We are learning so much of things. But in reality we cannot remember all the things that we are seeing in social media. We uh remember only very limited amount of details which we see in it. It is making us less social. We don't know what the person the name of the person who sitting near us. We are not communicating with each other. We are not communicating with real life problems. When we see our friends on social media, we see a very sanitized self of them and we think that they are living a good life which is which is creating jealousy and criticism to one another. With this I conclude. Thank you for the opportunity. Good afternoon everyone present here. I'm Arshita from batch 8. So my topic is drug addiction. Is it a mental health related issue? So why don't we always take it as a crime and not as a mental health issue. Of course we also take do 650 for fever. We take uh magnesium glycate for uh feeling when we are feeling stressed. When we take these in excess amount that is when it converts into drugs. Now it is just a medicine of course but later on it turns into drugs. How do we control drugs when we don't know how to stop it? People who have stress or sleep deprivation or any other personal problem, they might not be able to control it once they take it. They need support. They need help. They need rehabitations. They need doctors. Only if their loved ones extend hand and tell I'm there for you. That is when when they'll come and ask for help. Every coin has two sides. So, not only mental health related issues, it's also a crime. When when does it turn into a crime? When people sell drugs for their own profit, they are actually putting people's life into risk. They're not thinking about the other part. They are just thinking about their own profit. That is where the crime is actually starting. Nowadays, drug dealers are actually targeting childrens. What do childrens know? Do they know that is drug a good thing or a bad thing? They just consume it out of curiosity and that is affecting their family, friends, their mental peace. They think taking drugs is just like getting a peace for that point of time. But no, it is not giving peace. It is just spoiling their whole career, their life and their friend circle, relationship, everything. So if you want to, you can cut a plant, it will grow back. But if you want to remove it from the root, you have to cut the root cause. So the root cause here is the people who are selling drugs. So we have to find them. We have to give them legal punishment. They have to be given very very severe punishment that that they should suffer what a person who used drug has suffered. They have suffered severe trauma. Like every person does mistake. Obviously we are humans. We do mistakes. So every person needs a second chance to reform to change and build a life for themsel. Thank you everybody. So [clears throat] good afternoon to everyone. present here. I am Dakshmita and I'm here to speak on the topic is social media making us less social. Aristotle has said that humans are social animals. How how many of us here post commemorably on social media. We commemorate very meaningful events and we talk with other people. We post Snapchats. We post stories. We post uh reals on Instagram and we convey what we feel to others. With the advent of social media, we are redefining what sociality means. Sociality has gone beyond beyond what we just consider as traditional physical interactions. Now we extend that to digital interactions. A relationship that is primarily digital and has a meaningful long-distant relationship does not necessarily trump it because it does not confine to the uh idea of a physical relationship uh meaning uh being social in person. online pe different kinds of people get different opportunities to mingle with people who are like-minded. Talk about Reddit and uh subreddits that have a very niche area for people uh gathering together uh like-minded people gathering together. We have Facebook communities that talk of different topics. We have Bookstagram, we have Cookstagram, we have uh uh communities that bring together like-minded people. This can happen only on social media. And uh let's talk about inclusivity. All that aside, social media uh just because there is difference doesn't mean uh the deficit can be ignored. We have various ideas of connection. Are we really connecting all together? Are all the connections meaningful? Just because we have different avenues to connect, do we connect together? A study study with the US school students states that students spend around uh an average of 3.5 hours on social media every day when just a mere average of over 3 hours can warrant mental health issues. There is the uh uh problem of being projecting yourself as a different person online and not really projecting yourself as a real person. Your attention gets fragmented. When you can have one meaningful conversation in person with uh at present you talk to 17 different people in se 17 different manners and your attention gets fragmented for each person. All these uh primarily constitute the very essence that social media brings. It isolates a person in a crowd. A person can have many people as a friend online but they are not they might not necessarily feel included as such. It uh it epistemically divides us. algorithms project a different worldview for every single person and not all our ideas may correlate with each other. So the fact remains that social media despite being as inclusive as it sounds to be cannot uh wouldn't necessarily constitute inclusivity. So to conclude it is the path we choose to take not what it constitutes. Thank you. >> Wonderful arguments from both the sides. Let's give our students a big round of applause for the sportsmanship and articulation. Now we invite the esteemed guest to the dis. Please welcome ma'am. Please welcome sir. [music] Good evening everyone. Today is a great day as we celebrate teachers day. I welcome professor Armstrong sir, vice chancellor Madras University. I warmly welcome professor Ranganadan sir honorary council Myanmar. I welcome our chairperson Dr. Vayishnavi our managing partner Mr. Dinadens. It's now time to honor the presence of our esteemed chief guest. I invite Dr. Vayishnavi chairperson to fistate our chief guest. [music] >> [music] >> Now we would like to honor the presence of our esteemed guest, Professor [clears throat] Ranganadan Sir, Honorary Council of Myanmar. [music] >> [music] >> It's an honor to introduce um a scholar, administrator and torchbearer of academic excellence, Professor Armstrong, vice chancellor of University of Medas. Professor Amstrong's career reflects a lifelong commitment to learning language and legacy. With a distinguished body of work in cultural studies and the preservation of endangered languages, Sir has spent years championing voices at risk of being forgotten. Proving that a university's true wealth lies not just in rankings but in the diversity of thought it protects. To lead the University of Madras is to carry forward one of India's oldest and most storied institutions. One that has shaped statesmen, scientists and thinkers for over a century and a half. Under sir stewardship that legacy continues to grow through renewed academic initiatives and an unwavering belief in every student's potential. True leadership is measured not in power but in service, in patience, integrity and purpose. That is the leadership sir embodies and it is why we are honored to have such a voice with us today. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in giving a warm and enthusiastic welcome to Sir, Professor Amstrong, Vice Chancellor, University of Medas. I now invite sir to honor the gathering and give us some inspiring informations. Please welcome sir. Good evening. First of all, I thank uh madamevi chairperson uh for inviting me to address this gathering. I also thank uh Dr. Nandraal for facilitating my presence here. So I just want to correct I'm not full vice chancellor. Uh University of Madas is yet to appoint a full vice chancellor. We have a committee called vice chancellor convener committee and where Mr. Dhir Kumar sir is the convenor of the committee. Mr. Ratna Swami is another member and I am one of the members. So we three take care of the duties of my chancellor. So I have been you know discussing this for about one and a half years. I think government is going to appoint vice chancellor soon and today is one of the important days for all of us. Actually I don't want to take much of our time after listening to our very vibrant students who are very much informative. So regarding teachers day I don't want to mention anything. I just want to share with you how venos city of as madame rightly pointed out is [snorts] one of the important uh universities in India that he has given nearly 5 days for the nation one of the m teachers day teachers day is observed on the birthday of Dr. Rahak Krishnan former president and also a teacher similarly students day Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam's birthday is observed as students day. He was also our alumnist. Similarly, there is another day called Indian engineers day. Visaya, he was also our alumnist. Next one is Indian mathematics day is observed uh to mark the birthday of mathematician Ramanujan whose [snorts] you know uh center is there in our university. Romanian Institute of Advanced Studies in Mathematics. The next day is very important that is Indian Library Science Day. Uh Dr. Rangonadans was the first appointed librarian in the in India. So his birthday is observed as Indian Library Science Day. He was also alumnus. The last one is Indian Science Day is also very important and alumnus. Sers ramen's you know ramen effects you know that day is observed as Indian science day like this uh these days are uh very much attached with university of madas no university in India has given uh the six days for a nation so in that context all of us must be proud of the University of Madras because the teachers day is observed on the birthday of our alumnus of University of Madras. Uh dear students uh teachers of Shankaray Academy, I congratulate all of you for u you know like uh making a kind of epoch making presence in India. So before 10 years uh whenever we think of IAS coaching we think of only Delhi correct? Now it has become uh you know our center is one of the important centers in India that attracts students from many parts of uh India. In that way I congratulate madam uh her chairpersonship is very important uh to network with administrators you know justices all over India. the the kind of program that we are going to witness today evening is also one of the important events in the history of Sankara Academy. Uh dear students I just want to u you know mention two three things about the teachers who are here. So normal teachers that like me you know like uh like professor you know he teaches in Laya uh you know we are all you know teachers but uh teachers who are here in Sankara is academy is very very important because you teach a student uh you know who are motivated and who has ambition to the core. Normally in classroom you know like uh we meet students of you know like-mindedness you know they are all you know like normal but here students are very very important. So I just want to you know quote this CS Lewis quote uh you know the task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts. So all of you are you know in my opinion each one of you has lot of ambition that is very very important. So that ambition should be you know you know we we have to keep it uh in the right tempo that is very important. So teachers who are teaching here they have to go extra mile they have to go beyond the syllabus. So we are all here you know in the university system we go by syllabus but here tutors you know they go beyond the syllabus so they become uh a kind of a mentor a teacher becoming a mentor is only here I can see the next thing important thing is at this advent of AI as students rightly pointed out they educators here also they take care of the emotional intelligence you know I I am in touch with Dr. [snorts] Nandanda Gabal that I I I come to know the emotions are very important more than the artificial intelligence artificial super intelligence artificial general intelligence emotions are very important. So tutors here they have to achieve a balance between AI and AI. Okay, that is also very important and you are successfully doing and the next one is your contribution is very very important. So we we like you know we create you know we curate teachers in the classroom but you are you are you know like generating administrators for the nation. So that is very important and for that you know you need lot of skills your multitasking skills are very important you know your networking skills are very important your wide reading passes reading are very important so I consider all tutors here a kind of grand teachers okay who you must celebrate teachers day and thank you so much for the opportunity thank you >> thank you sir for those valuable and inspiring words your insights will surely stay with our students for years to come. Now it's the time we have been waiting for. So we'll be announcing the prices now. So once the announcement of prices is done, I would request the winners to uh gather near the dis. So once the prize distribution starts, we will come up on the stage. So regarding the debate, so we all knew that team B has uh team B has been announced as the winners. So Miss Harita, Miss Tjasinas and Sandy. So we we request you to come near the dis. We request the chief guest to distribute the prices to the winners. [music] >> [music] >> Now we would announce the winners of for and against. And uh we have two first prize winners here. We have Miss Gayatri and Miss Purima. both of us prize winners and the second prize goes to Miss Archita. The third prize goes to Miss Dakshmita. We invite the winners to the stage. Gayatri and Puruma are getting the first prize. [music] [music] >> [music] [music] >> Mr. Archa. [music] Mr. Sitta is receiving the second prize [music] and Miss Dakshmita is receiving the third prize. [music] I extend the heartfelt gratitude to the jury members who has given us the results. I request all the winners to assemble on the stage for a group photo. [music] Heat. Heat. [music] >> [music] [music] >> We invite the runners up of the debate competition uh Miss Wine, Mr. Adita and Mr. Linga to please receive THE PRIZES. >> [applause] >> WE now request the runners up of foreign against competition to receive the prizes. First, I may call upon Miss Dashana. Next, we call upon Missi. [applause] [laughter] and finally we call upon Mr. Seladan. >> Thank you everyone for your participation. Uh we can discuss the meeting. Thank you very much. >> Thank you so much for clapping. Teachers day would be incomplete without honoring our own faculty members who tirelessly guide and nurture our students every single day. Now I request our esteemed guests to facilitate facilitate our faculty members. We invite our faculty members Dr. Ilango sir [music] Mr. Mr. Managand sir Mr. Vijay sir [music] [music] Mr. Rashkumar sir [music] Mr. Sarah sir [music] Mr. frame on in [music] German. [music] Rajita ma'am. [music] PK Ganesh sir. [music] Chandra singer sir. [music] [music] Part again sir [music] is sir [music] going sir Joseph siran [music] sir [music] sam muti Sir, what happened? Sir, [music] it's me. [applause] [music] I now invite Mr. Manigandan sir to propose the word of thanks for this session. Please welcome sir. [music] >> Honorable uh chief guest and our esteemed the chairman, managing director and respected faculties and dear students and the non-working non-eing staffs. I thank you all on behalf of Shankaray Academy and first of all uh it's my great honor and it's a great privilege to stand in front of you to present this or propose this word of thanks on behalf of Shankar Academy and our beloved Shankar sir I'm presenting this word of thanks so so here first of all I would like to express my heartfelt uh gratitude to our uh chief guest um uh Sir Dr. S. Armstrong sir the vice choice chancellor convenor committee of mas university for uh taking the time to grace the event. So really it's a very short span of time uh so we gave to sir but sir actually came here and then grace the event. So it's a very pleasure sir and it's our privilege uh to submit our thanks to you and also we thank professor anganadan sir the consul general of uh the republic of myanma for coming and gracing the occasion. So it's our heartfelt gratitude sir. We are always thankful to you to all the chief guests. So it's always uh it's our moment of pleasure sir. And then uh a special thanks to our okay so though um our ma'am belongs to our institution. So it's our um our part uh to to submit our thanks to our uh chairperson the managing director Vishna ma'am uh for uh the valuable uh support and then the vision uh taking forward the pattern of our shanker sir and also the continuous encouragement in uh taking forward this institution and then building this institution uh institution in a visionary way. So I submit our thanks and then apart from that so our the diner so the managing partner so who acts as who is the father of our va so who acts as a pillar of support and always stood as a moral support to all of us whenever required so we are thankful to you sir and then uh on this uh day okay on this occasion the most the day of relevance so which we call as teachers day so day will become incomplete if we if we just mentioned if I fail to mention our the beloved the most respected the teachers who act as the pillars of support to this institution because for we I really submit the thanks for the work what they do. Uh the teachers they not only teach okay from our opinion from our perspective we feel that they not only teach so they actually they guide the students they actually they shape their future and they act they actually act as a role model and then through their rel relentless selfless hard work and then we are always as a institution we are grateful and thankful to all the faculties for your efforts sir and then apart from this all the works of the teachers that will become incomplete without the support of the invisible and then behind the scene hard works put up by our non-eing staffs all the non-eing staffs exam like for example our all our department heads all our departments starting from HR starting from accounts and finance and academ academics teams like pre-torming mosha and then about the marketing team and technical team and then maintenance team the homekeeping team housekeeping team all these people play a very important role behind the scene works they are putting without them our works will be always will stay incomplete. Then apart from that okay we um I submit my uh thanks to all the event organizers and then student volunteers. So who actually spend the day and night okay in making this uh celebration or this event a colorful one or a memorable one. Apart from that uh so I submit my special thanks to the students because we gave the same announcement in the classroom to all the students but few students okay who came forward and then participated in the event their enthusiastic participation made this day gave a intellectual treat to all of us. So it's very easy to make some entertainment presentation but intellectual presentation actually very few people come forward and whether the whether you won or you lost but actually who participated you are the real winners. So he found it very difficult to judge among you. So he gave a very good performance as a teachers we are always thankful to you. So you are going to be the the future. Okay. So these bureaucrats of the country on our behalf. We thank you. Okay. Then okay. So then okay submit. So finally once again so I submit my thanks to all of us for making this day a very memorable one. Thank you all. Thank you. >> Thank you sir for the gracious note of gratitude. Now uh we may all rise for the national anthem. Foreign [music] [music] speech. Foreign speech. Foreign speech. [music and singing] >> [music and singing] [music] [singing] [music and singing] >> J J J J J J J J J J J J J J J J J J J J J J [singing] [music]