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 five hundred and ten — 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 three minutes; the prepared round gives you a briefing first.

Draw a topic — start speaking

Easy

For anyone who finds speaking hard at all: everyday life, spoken from experience alone.

  • The one household chore nobody in the family wants to do
  • What changes in a house when the television is off for a week
  • Living with parents after college: a comfort or a compromise
  • The first time you cooked for someone else
  • Why the youngest child gets away with more
  • Grandparents' stories and what they teach that school cannot
  • The family WhatsApp group and what it reveals about us
  • Should children be paid for doing housework
  • What a power cut does to a family evening
  • The relative who always asks about marks and marriage
  • The teacher you still remember, and why
  • Last-minute study works until the day it does not
  • Homework: practice that helps or a habit schools cannot drop
  • Hostel life teaches things a classroom never will
  • Why every school has a back bench, and who sits there
  • Group projects and the one person who does all the work
  • Should uniforms continue after school ends
  • The subject you were bad at and what it taught you
  • The first salary and what people do with it
  • The first job is for learning, not for the salary
  • Why Monday mornings feel harder than they are
  • The colleague who never says no and what it costs them
  • Should people take their lunch break away from the desk
  • What a good boss does that a bad boss never notices
  • A day without the phone: what people actually miss
  • Why we photograph food before eating it
  • Reels before sleep: the habit nobody admits to
  • Leaving someone on read is a small act with a real cost
  • Should children under fourteen have their own smartphone
  • Why people post their holidays and hide their bad days
  • The blue tick and the anxiety of being seen
  • Online shopping returns: the freedom to change your mind
  • Pocket money teaches more about money than school ever did
  • The small daily spend that adds up: chai, autos and delivery fees
  • Why bargaining at a market feels wrong to some and right to others
  • Should friends split the bill equally or by what each ate
  • Lending money to a friend and the friendship that follows
  • Sales and discounts: saving money or spending more
  • Paying by phone: what changed when the wallet went digital
  • Why the monthly budget never survives the month
  • Home food versus outside food and what each one means
  • Why street food tastes better than it should
  • The tiffin box and the friendships it built
  • Skipping breakfast: a habit or a choice
  • Should every adult know how to cook one full meal
  • Why the same dish tastes different at home and in a restaurant
  • Food delivery has changed how a household eats
  • What the daily commute takes out of a person
  • The auto-rickshaw negotiation as a daily skill
  • Why nobody talks to their neighbours in a city flat
  • The local train, the bus and the strangers you see every day
  • Traffic jams and what people do with the time
  • Moving to a new city: what the first month feels like
  • Why small towns feel slower and whether that is bad
  • What a good park does for a neighbourhood
  • Why old friends need no explanation
  • Friendships that fade after college and whether that is fine
  • Can you be friends with someone you disagree with
  • The friend who only calls when they need something
  • How many close friends a person actually needs
  • Returning extra change: a small honesty that says a lot
  • Honking at a red light and what it changes
  • White lies: harmless kindness or a bad habit
  • Should you tell a friend their business idea is bad
  • Helping a stranger on the road when you are already late
  • Keeping a promise that no longer suits you
  • Taking the last piece when everyone is being polite
  • Copying in an exam: everyone did it, so does it matter
  • Litter on the street and the person who picks it up
  • Waking up early: a real advantage or a myth we repeat
  • Why new year resolutions rarely reach February
  • The daily walk and what it does that the gym cannot
  • Reading a book versus watching the same story as a series
  • Why people keep clothes they never wear
  • Sleep is the first thing young people give up, and the last they should
  • Learning a hobby as an adult and being bad at it in public
  • Why we remember song lyrics but forget names
  • The habit of saying sorry too often
  • Festivals in the city versus festivals in the village
  • What a birthday means once you stop counting
  • Why the price of tomatoes and onions swings every few months
  • What a hundred rupees bought ten years ago and what it buys today
  • The middleman between the farmer and your vegetable basket
  • The ration shop and what it means to the families who use it
  • Fixed deposits versus gold: how Indian families actually save
  • The electricity bill and what makes it climb every summer
  • The EMI and how it decides a young family's choices
  • Why India is called a young country and what that means for jobs
  • The GST on a restaurant bill and what the tax actually pays for
  • Why farmers protest about prices and what a city dweller should know
  • Why the dollar rate matters to someone who never travels
  • Why a small town has fewer jobs than it has graduates
  • Why the local kirana gives credit and the supermarket never does
  • The advertisement you still remember and why it worked
  • Why every brand runs its biggest sale in the same festive week
  • Buy one get one free and who actually pays for the free one
  • Why the chai stall outside the office never goes out of business
  • The shop that closed on your street and what replaced it
  • Why people trust a brand they have never tested
  • Loyalty points and the shopping they quietly steer
  • The price that ends in 99 and why it still works on us
  • Why a new restaurant fills up and empties within a year
  • Why celebrities sell everything from cement to biscuits
  • Free trials and the subscription nobody remembers cancelling
  • Why a phone battery gets worse every year and what to do about it
  • Asking a chatbot for homework help and what it gets wrong
  • Why the doctor insists you finish the antibiotic course
  • Why a vaccine given in childhood protects you decades later
  • Solar panels on the roof and what they change for a household
  • Why the air feels different in November in a north Indian city
  • Why mosquitoes bite some people more than others
  • The electric scooter on every street and what changed to put it there
  • Why a fan cools a room without cooling the air
  • Why weather apps are wrong about rain and right about heat
  • Why sugar hides in food that does not taste sweet
  • Chandrayaan and why a country with potholes goes to the moon
  • A failure you learned more from than any success
  • The habit you are proudest of breaking
  • A time you changed your mind about something important
  • The person you call first with good news, and why
  • What you would tell your fifteen-year-old self
  • A skill you taught yourself and how you did it
  • The compliment you still remember
  • A decision you made that surprised the people who know you
  • The job you would do if money did not matter
  • The census worker at the door and why India is counting houses this year
  • Spain winning the World Cup and why India stays a cricket country
  • India's women cricketers winning gold at the Asian Games
  • The hottest August ever recorded and what it felt like where you live
  • Petrol at over a hundred rupees and how a household adjusts
  • Floods in Assam and Kerala this monsoon and who is left to rebuild
  • World leaders in Delhi for the BRICS summit and what the city went through
  • A film star becoming Tamil Nadu's chief minister and what voters wanted

Medium

For a newspaper reader: general awareness, no specialist knowledge.

  • Why Indians don't buy insurance
  • Should India's cities have directly elected mayors
  • Reservation policy, fifty years on
  • Streaming, censorship, and the shrinking space for Indian film
  • Why India underperforms at the Olympics
  • 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
  • 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
  • Why Indian universities don't produce research
  • Metro rail or buses: what Indian cities should have bought
  • Migrant labour and the states that export it
  • Why cricket crowds out every other sport in India
  • Indian journalism's business model, and what it pays for
  • Tourism: the Indian industry that underperforms its endowment
  • 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
  • The regional language internet and the market it created
  • Heritage conservation against the tourism India wants
  • Solid waste and the landfills ringing Indian cities
  • Indian streaming platforms and what they pay creators
  • 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
  • Indian cinema's move from the box office to streaming economics
  • The economics of the Indian wedding
  • Kota, and India's market for exam preparation
  • India's mobile network quality against the price of data
  • Resale, repair and India's second-hand economy
  • Edtech in India: the boom, the regulation, and the collapse
  • Parks, lakes and the urban commons nobody defends
  • Interstate migration and the politics of local job quotas
  • The Indian consumer's shift from unbranded to branded
  • 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
  • The economics of Indian street food
  • Old age homes and the quiet unravelling of the joint family
  • India's coaching-free elite: how the top percentile actually studies
  • The two-wheeler as India's real family car
  • 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
  • The parallel economy of school textbooks and uniforms
  • The Indian gym boom and the business of new year resolutions
  • Water tankers: the private market for a public failure
  • Why Indian airports became malls
  • The tuition teacher next door versus the edtech app
  • Indian Railways catering: a captive market and what it produces
  • Pandal economics: what a ten-day festival builds and tears down
  • 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
  • Milk versus plant milk in the world's largest dairy nation
  • Why Indian landlords prefer eleven-month agreements
  • The driving school industry and the licence it actually sells
  • The Indian barber shop: informality's most resilient firm
  • Old newspapers, raddi, and the original circular economy
  • Why every Indian city has a furniture street
  • The examination economy: what a government job is worth paying for
  • 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
  • Should Indian cities ban private cars from their oldest streets
  • The four-day work week and whether India can afford it
  • Why Indian parents still prefer government jobs for their children
  • Should schools teach personal finance before calculus
  • Coaching centres and the childhood they replace
  • Should influencers be held to advertising rules like brands
  • Why Indian trains run late and whether anyone still minds
  • The case for a retirement age for politicians
  • Should tipping be expected in Indian restaurants
  • Should exit polls be banned before counting day
  • Delivery riders in the rain: who is responsible for their safety
  • Should Indian films carry age ratings that are actually enforced
  • The Indian passport and the visa queue it puts its holder in
  • Should homework be banned in primary school
  • Should the voting age be lowered to sixteen
  • Dating apps in India and the parents who still arrange marriages
  • Road deaths in India and the helmet nobody wears
  • Should schools start later so teenagers can sleep
  • The plastic bag ban and the vendor who still hands one over
  • Should India move to two time zones
  • Loudspeakers, festivals, and the noise a neighbour must tolerate
  • Should Indian cricketers be allowed to play in foreign leagues
  • Ola, Uber, and the auto driver who refused the meter
  • Why Indian TV serials run for years and whether audiences want them
  • Public toilets in Indian cities and why nobody wants to build them
  • Should hospitals be allowed to advertise
  • Should reservation extend to private sector jobs
  • Why Indian cities are hotter every summer and who feels it first
  • Should freebies before elections be banned
  • Should airports and railway stations sell food at street prices
  • The BJP's first government in West Bengal and what it inherited
  • Kerala turning to the Congress and the Left's loss of its last big state
  • The Hague ruling on the Indus Waters Treaty and India's refusal to accept it
  • Farmers against the India-US trade deal and the imports they fear
  • Foreign investors selling Indian shares in September and who is buying them
  • Andy Burnham replacing Keir Starmer and what it says about British politics
  • Zelenskyy's offer of an energy ceasefire and whether Russia will take it
  • The Fed's first rate hike since 2023 and what dearer dollars mean for India
  • The Gujarat raid on a journalist and where reporting ends and offence begins
  • Protests in Delhi for income-based quotas and the reservation debate reopened
  • Merz's party losing two state elections and what Germany's voters are saying
  • Indonesia's forest fires and a third of the world's fire emissions in one week
  • Why this career, and what you would tell someone considering it
  • A time you disagreed with a senior and how you handled it
  • The hardest feedback you have received and what you did with it
  • A time you had to deliver bad news and how you chose the words
  • When you covered for a colleague and whether you should have
  • The most useful thing a manager ever did for you
  • A time you were praised for work that was not mostly yours
  • A time you had to choose between a deadline and doing it right
  • What you would do differently if you led your last team again
  • The mistake at work you still think about
  • A time you said no at work and what it cost you
  • Your biggest weakness, answered honestly for once

Hard

For top-tier MBA panels: policy mechanics, numbers and institutions.

  • 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
  • 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
  • Judicial pendency: a resources problem or a design problem
  • Can India decouple growth from emissions
  • The case against subsidies for electric cars
  • 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
  • Contract farming and the trust that was never built
  • India's telecom market after the price war
  • The Indian bond market and the retail investor who never came
  • 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
  • The health workforce India does not have
  • India's space programme after private entry
  • 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
  • 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
  • Bank fraud, wilful default, and India's recovery record
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • Green hydrogen: the cost curve and India's bet on it
  • 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
  • Steel: what being the second-largest producer actually costs
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • Regional airlines and the routes that never survive
  • 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
  • India's second-hand car market and the organised-sector takeover
  • Railway station redevelopment: monuments or transit
  • Why Indian pharma won and Indian medical devices lost
  • Regional stock exchanges: why every city once had one and none survived
  • India's flower economy: temples, weddings, and cold chains
  • The security guard industry: India's largest private employer nobody studies
  • The godown economy: warehousing before it got a logistics ministry
  • 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
  • Court stenographers, typists, and the paper courts run on
  • The Indian pilgrimage economy after the infrastructure push
  • 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
  • Monsoon forecasting: the one prediction the economy runs on
  • 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
  • The pension a farm widow actually receives
  • Scrap steel, ship breaking, and Alang's second lives
  • India's ice factories and the cold chain before electricity reached
  • The lottery states: why some Indian states sell luck and others ban it
  • The Uniform Civil Code and the federal bargain it would rewrite
  • Delimitation after the census and the southern states' share of Parliament
  • UAPA, sedition, and the line between dissent and disorder
  • Anti-conversion laws, freedom of religion, and the burden of proof
  • Marital rape and the exception Indian law still keeps
  • Sub-classification within reservation after the 2024 Supreme Court ruling
  • The basic structure doctrine and who guards the Constitution from Parliament
  • Hate speech law in India and the platform that acts faster than the court
  • Euthanasia, living wills, and the right to die with dignity in India
  • Same-sex marriage after Supriyo: what the court left to Parliament
  • Bail as the rule, jail as the exception, and the courts that forget it
  • The RBI's fourth straight hold at 5.25 percent and what it is waiting for
  • Q1 FY27 at 7.8 percent: what drove it and what the GVA gap conceals
  • The India-US interim deal: tariffs at 18 percent and the Russian oil clause
  • The rupee's record low near 97 and the RBI's capital-account defence
  • India's extra 22 billion dollar oil bill since March and who absorbs it
  • Britain sanctioning Israeli settlements and the widening Western split on Israel
  • BRICS in Delhi: exports up 34 percent and the rupee settlement pitch
  • The Iran war's seventh month: Hormuz, Bab al-Mandab, and India's tanker routes
  • The census caste question, asked open-ended, and the data it will produce
  • GPT-6 at half the price of its predecessor and the economics of the AI price war
  • Gemini reaching live systems during a test and what agent safety now requires
  • Guterres's last General Assembly and the race for the next UN secretary-general