Rostrum

Every extempore topic Rostrum can draw

Rostrum never lets you pick. Choosing your own topic is how you quietly avoid the ones you're weak at, so every round starts with a draw from these three hundred — never one you have spoken on before. They are the kind that turn up in extempore, GD-PI and JAM rounds: India's economy and policy, and the arguments underneath everything. Read the list if you like. You still won't know which one is coming.

Free, no sign-up, five rounds a day. A cold round gives you the topic and ninety seconds; the prepared round gives you a briefing first.

Draw a topic — start speaking

On India's economy and policy

  • Why India's manufacturing share of GDP refuses to rise
  • Quick commerce: ten-minute delivery and the unit economics underneath it
  • The UPI paradox: a payments system everyone uses and nobody earns from
  • India's semiconductor mission: subsidy without an ecosystem
  • Can a services-led economy create enough jobs for India?
  • Minimum support prices: price floor or reform trap
  • Indian pharma's quality problem and the export machine it threatens
  • Electric two-wheelers: the one segment where India could lead
  • India's power sector and the permanence of discom losses
  • The gig economy and the labour codes that were never enforced
  • Real estate after RERA: what actually changed for the buyer
  • India's funding winter and the governance failures behind it
  • GST at eight years: one nation, how many rates
  • Why India imports edible oil, and what that reveals about farm policy
  • IT services and AI: is the pyramid staffing model finished
  • India's critical minerals dependence
  • Indian Railways: freight subsidising passengers, and who pays for it
  • Why Indians don't buy insurance
  • Aviation economics in a duopoly market
  • Coal India inside a net-zero commitment
  • The rupee, the dollar, and India's trade-settlement ambitions
  • Defence indigenisation: import substitution or capability building
  • Ayushman Bharat and the private hospital incentive problem
  • Cash transfers versus subsidies in kind
  • Why formalising the informal sector keeps failing
  • The demographic dividend and the schooling that has to pay for it
  • Data protection law and the exemptions the state wrote for itself
  • Municipal finance: why Indian cities are broke
  • Nuclear power in India after the civil liability act
  • Logistics costs and India's export competitiveness gap
  • Public sector banks: privatise, merge, or leave alone
  • Have free trade agreements helped Indian industry
  • Should India's cities have directly elected mayors
  • Judicial pendency: a resources problem or a design problem
  • Can India decouple growth from emissions
  • The case against subsidies for electric cars
  • Reservation policy, fifty years on
  • Streaming, censorship, and the shrinking space for Indian film
  • Why India underperforms at the Olympics
  • Growth or redistribution: which should India choose now
  • Why India's tax base stays narrow no matter who is in office
  • The National Education Policy and the schools that have to deliver it
  • Water pricing and the politics of a free borewell
  • India's textile industry after the China-plus-one promise
  • Urban flooding: drainage, encroachment, and who signed off
  • The rise of the Indian direct-to-consumer brand
  • Air pollution in the Indo-Gangetic plain: whose problem to solve
  • Contract farming and the trust that was never built
  • Why Indian universities don't produce research
  • India's telecom market after the price war
  • Metro rail or buses: what Indian cities should have bought
  • The Indian bond market and the retail investor who never came
  • Migrant labour and the states that export it
  • Solar manufacturing: can India build what it installs
  • Cooperative banks and the regulation that keeps failing
  • India's fisheries and the coastline nobody counts
  • Digital lending and the collection practices behind it
  • The MSME credit gap and every scheme aimed at it
  • Why cricket crowds out every other sport in India
  • The health workforce India does not have
  • India's space programme after private entry
  • Indian journalism's business model, and what it pays for
  • Housing for the urban poor: schemes, stock, and vacancy
  • Ethanol blending and the crops that pay for it
  • Why the Indian judiciary resists administrative reform
  • Tourism: the Indian industry that underperforms its endowment
  • India's dairy cooperative model, and whether it can be repeated
  • Why Indian roads cost more per kilometre than they should
  • Drug price control and access to medicine in India
  • India's rare earth ambitions and the processing bottleneck
  • Cold chains, warehousing, and the food that rots in transit
  • The BSNL question: what a state telecom operator is for
  • Angel tax, and how India treats its own investors
  • Why Indian cities cannot collect property tax
  • Asset monetisation and the national highways balance sheet
  • India's ports and the shipbuilding industry it never built
  • Skill India: certificates issued against jobs found
  • Specialty chemicals: India's quiet manufacturing success
  • Sugar, the crop that Indian policy cannot let go of
  • Groundwater depletion and the free electricity that pumps it
  • Medical devices: what India imports and cannot make
  • Why India's exports concentrate in so few firms
  • The regional language internet and the market it created
  • Bank fraud, wilful default, and India's recovery record
  • Heritage conservation against the tourism India wants
  • The economics of private higher education in India
  • Dedicated freight corridors and the modal share that will not shift
  • Agricultural credit: who actually receives the loan
  • India's packaging problem and the plastic waste rules
  • Gold: imports, household savings, and policy anxiety
  • Air conditioning and India's coming electricity demand shock
  • Electronics assembly in India: value added or screwdriver work
  • Solid waste and the landfills ringing Indian cities
  • Indian streaming platforms and what they pay creators
  • The fertiliser subsidy, the largest cheque nobody discusses
  • Why women's participation in India's workforce keeps falling
  • Tiruppur, Surat, Ludhiana: the geography of Indian industry
  • Standards, testing, and why Indian manufacturing quality lags
  • India's water treaties with its neighbours
  • Ayurveda, AYUSH, and the evidence standard for Indian medicine
  • India's civil service: generalists running technical ministries
  • Indian cinema's move from the box office to streaming economics
  • Cement, and the industry that tracks India's construction cycle
  • Why India's stock market rose while corporate earnings did not
  • SIPs, mutual funds, and the retailisation of Indian savings
  • The economics of the Indian wedding
  • Drone rules and the agricultural case for them in India
  • Public procurement, and why Indian government buying is slow
  • The Forest Rights Act, twenty years on
  • The north-east's economy and the connectivity argument
  • Kota, and India's market for exam preparation
  • India's mobile network quality against the price of data
  • Green hydrogen: the cost curve and India's bet on it
  • Resale, repair and India's second-hand economy
  • Why Indian ports lose transhipment to Colombo and Singapore
  • Farm mechanisation and the shrinking Indian landholding
  • India's pension system and the old-age income gap
  • Political funding after electoral bonds
  • Edtech in India: the boom, the regulation, and the collapse
  • Steel: what being the second-largest producer actually costs
  • Parks, lakes and the urban commons nobody defends
  • Aviation infrastructure beyond India's metro cities
  • Cash in the Indian economy after demonetisation
  • Micro-irrigation and the water India could be saving
  • India's official statistics and the credibility problem
  • Interstate migration and the politics of local job quotas
  • Handloom and handicraft: heritage industry or subsidy sink
  • India's vaccine and biotech manufacturing after the pandemic
  • Housing finance, affordability, and the Indian mortgage market
  • Why Indian manufacturing firms stay small
  • The Indian consumer's shift from unbranded to branded
  • Disaster management and what India spends on adapting to climate
  • The Indian arms of global capability centres: back office or brain
  • Why Indian firms underinvest in R&D
  • Toll roads, FASTag, and who actually pays for Indian highways
  • The economics of Indian street food
  • Old age homes and the quiet unravelling of the joint family
  • Regional airlines and the routes that never survive
  • India's coaching-free elite: how the top percentile actually studies
  • The two-wheeler as India's real family car
  • Temple economies: donations, trusts, and the wealth nobody audits
  • Why Indian public buses are always full and always losing money
  • The invisible export: Indian nurses, and the countries that train none
  • Diagnostics labs and the trust problem in Indian pathology
  • Kirana versus quick commerce: the corner shop's actual moat
  • What the Indian wedding industry does to household savings
  • Stray dogs, municipal capacity, and the limits of compassion policy
  • India's second-hand car market and the organised-sector takeover
  • The parallel economy of school textbooks and uniforms
  • Railway station redevelopment: monuments or transit
  • Why Indian pharma won and Indian medical devices lost
  • The Indian gym boom and the business of new year resolutions
  • Regional stock exchanges: why every city once had one and none survived
  • Water tankers: the private market for a public failure
  • India's flower economy: temples, weddings, and cold chains
  • The security guard industry: India's largest private employer nobody studies
  • Why Indian airports became malls
  • The tuition teacher next door versus the edtech app
  • Indian Railways catering: a captive market and what it produces
  • The godown economy: warehousing before it got a logistics ministry
  • Pandal economics: what a ten-day festival builds and tears down
  • The great Indian paint war: why five players fought a price battle in a growing market
  • Ceiling fans: the appliance India actually designs for itself
  • The PhD glut: what India produces doctorates for
  • Bank branches in the UPI era: what a branch is now for
  • The economics of Indian cricket beyond the IPL
  • Apprenticeships: why India trains on paper and hires by referral
  • The rise of the Indian franchise: from chaat brands to preschools
  • Old machines, new tariffs: India's second-hand capital goods market
  • The business of Indian news television
  • Who owns India's beaches
  • The chartered accountant: India's default financial adviser
  • Milk versus plant milk in the world's largest dairy nation
  • Court stenographers, typists, and the paper courts run on
  • The Indian pilgrimage economy after the infrastructure push
  • Why Indian landlords prefer eleven-month agreements
  • The great hostel shortage: student housing as an asset class
  • Fireworks, festivals, and the Sivakasi question
  • The mango economy: export dreams and cold-chain reality
  • Why power looms beat handlooms and what policy pretends
  • India's blood supply: donation, banking, and the shortage that persists
  • The driving school industry and the licence it actually sells
  • Monsoon forecasting: the one prediction the economy runs on
  • The Indian barber shop: informality's most resilient firm
  • Old newspapers, raddi, and the original circular economy
  • Why India's islands stay undeveloped while its hills overflow
  • The ghost malls of tier-two India
  • Speed post versus the couriers: what the post office still wins
  • India's honey, spices, and the adulteration economy
  • The generic medicine store the government runs
  • Bollywood's stunt workers and the price of the shot
  • The Indian zoo: conservation, spectacle, and municipal budgets
  • Why every Indian city has a furniture street
  • The pension a farm widow actually receives
  • Scrap steel, ship breaking, and Alang's second lives
  • The examination economy: what a government job is worth paying for
  • India's ice factories and the cold chain before electricity reached
  • The lottery states: why some Indian states sell luck and others ban it

On the arguments underneath everything

  • Does economic growth still make people better off
  • What is lost when everything becomes measurable
  • Is meritocracy a fair system or a comforting story
  • Is privacy a right or a luxury good
  • Should artificial intelligence be regulated like medicine or like speech
  • What cities owe the people who cannot afford to live in them
  • Is nationalism necessary glue or a solvable problem
  • The ethics of editing the human genome
  • Does universal basic income solve the right problem
  • Do social networks make democracies weaker
  • The uses of boredom
  • Should we settle space while Earth is unfinished
  • Is history written by winners or by record-keepers
  • Attention as the scarcest resource of the century
  • Is scientific consensus a form of authority or of evidence
  • What English as India's elite language costs the country
  • Does tradition deserve the benefit of the doubt
  • Ageing societies and the claim the old make on the young
  • Does climate justice require rich countries to shrink
  • Remote work: a permanent arrangement or a temporary concession
  • Does free speech need protecting from private platforms
  • Is longevity research a public good or a rich man's project
  • What we owe generations we will never meet
  • Is anonymity necessary for a healthy internet
  • Should voting be compulsory
  • The moral status of animals in an industrial food system
  • Is expertise still legible to the public
  • Does art need scarcity to have value
  • Should there be a right to disconnect from work
  • Is federalism a brake on ambition or a guard against error
  • What is a university for once the credential is the point
  • Can a society be too safe
  • Is forgiveness a virtue or an abdication
  • Does technology make inequality visible, or make it worse
  • Is democracy compatible with long-term planning
  • Does inequality matter if poverty is falling
  • Should knowledge be free
  • Is the nation-state the right unit for climate action
  • What does it mean to deserve what you earn
  • Is risk-taking a virtue or a privilege
  • Should machines make life-and-death decisions
  • Is loneliness a public health problem or a private condition
  • Does prison do any of the things it claims to do
  • Is beauty a legitimate criterion in science
  • What a city remembers, and what it demolishes
  • Should parents choose their children's traits
  • Is the decline of the humanities a loss or a correction
  • Does more choice make people freer
  • Is patriotism compatible with honest history
  • What is owed to workers displaced by technology
  • Is slowness a luxury or a necessity
  • Is progress a fact or a story we tell
  • Should childhood be optimised
  • Is empathy a good guide to policy
  • What is lost when work becomes identity
  • Should the state have a view on how people ought to live
  • Is competition always productive
  • Does scale ruin institutions
  • Is nostalgia a political force
  • Should difficult knowledge ever be restricted
  • Is bureaucracy an obstacle or a safeguard
  • What makes an argument persuasive rather than correct
  • Is ambition a virtue
  • Does secularism require silence about religion
  • Is trust in institutions recoverable once it is lost
  • Should the dead have rights
  • Is optimism a duty
  • What we mean when we call something natural
  • Is convenience making us less capable
  • Should cities be optimised for residents or for growth
  • Is the interview a good way to choose anyone
  • What we lose when nobody memorises anything
  • Is thrift still a virtue in a consumption economy
  • Do rankings improve the things they rank
  • Is the family the best unit of welfare delivery
  • Should luck be taxed
  • Is fluency mistaken for intelligence
  • The case for doing things badly
  • Is privacy from your own family a right
  • Do deadlines produce better work or just faster work
  • Is charisma a skill or a licence
  • Should the young defer to the old, or the old to the young
  • What a queue reveals about a society
  • Is boredom in childhood a resource
  • Does travel actually broaden the mind
  • Is punctuality a moral quality
  • Should we trust processes or people
  • The right to be forgotten by an algorithm
  • Is hospitality a duty or a transaction
  • What examinations actually measure
  • Is the courtroom the right place for truth
  • Should infrastructure outlive its planners
  • The ethics of bargaining
  • Is silence agreement
  • Should every skill be monetised
  • What a city's noise says about its order
  • Is inheritance earned
  • The dignity of queues versus the efficiency of apps
  • Should public art be beautiful or provocative
  • Is a promise to the dead binding
  • What makes advice worth taking
  • Is attention a fair price for free things