AGAINST THE MOTION

This house believes that imprisonment provisions should be removed

from business laws since they hinder economic growth.

“Resp. jury and my teachers, my fellow mates, honorable guests and all my near and dear

ones. A very GOOD AfterNoon …… to one and all present here.”

I shaarika singh , a stern ENTP who goes by the pronouns she/her with my co-speaker,

Pratyanik Chakraborty, another fellow ENTP take this opportunity to present our views

against the motion of what we frame as “BLATANT ABROGATION OF PLAUSIBLE

LAWS IN THE NAME OF ECONOMY”. Or as the House suggests “imprisonment

provisions should be removed from business laws since they hinder economic

growth.”

we would take this opportunity to greet our opposition as well by stating,

"we'd love to have a war of wits with you, but we see that you are unarmed!".
Taking the motion further with the permission of our jury, We would like to give this court a

headstart with the saying of the infamous chemistry teacher or a multi-millionaire

“businessman”, Walter White, who once told his partner, quite proudly after bolstering his

business with numerous violations that:

“Jesse, you asked me if I was in the meth business or the

money business. Neither. I'm in the empire business.”

The indestructible confidence of a millionaire, cashing bills from his dirty business, with

these words of his, makes it discernible for the common to assess, to reflect, to contemplate

how the power of running a business with unprecedented profits can not only make such

entities an outlaw but also a ticking bomb on the money banks of the innocents, all in the

pursuit of “THE EMPIRE BUSINESS”.

A financially struggling model who gets murdered by a RICH scion inheritor of a politician
for refusing him a drink past midnight brings us one of the landmark cases of Jessica Lal and
Infamous MANNU SHARMA, serving behind the bar for decades.

But the same is questioned in the parlance of AN ECONOMICALLY FEEBLE MIDDLE-

CLASS FAMILY LIVING IN THE HOPE OF POSSESSION OF THAT one 2 BHK FLAT
SINCE AGES BUT STILL EMPTY-HANDED, where the father is dying every day because
all HIS LIFE SAVINGS SHOVED DOWN IN A MIRAGE OF A BLACK HOLE WHICH
OPENS ONLY IN THE ACCOUNTS OF THESE BUSINESSMEN, SHOULD GROW
PAST THE INCARCENATION BECAUSE it’s HINDERING OUR ECONOMIC
GROWTH?
This brings us to CROSSING A DECADE FAMOUS BREACH OF TRUST CASE BY
AMRAPALI HOUSING SOCIETY, where millions of buyers were siphoned by four
businessmen promising the innocents a better future while filling their bags with public
money.

The whole idea behind introducing laws pertaining to incarceration in the business world is to
protect individuals from WHITE COLLAR CRIMES, which to date, is viciously instilled in
our economy, hollowing it from the inside from money laundering, unauthorised foreign
exchange ventures, Be it the SCANDAL OF NIRAV MODI OR THAT OF SAHARA.

Now questioning the laws which will protect society from individuals who demonstrate such
willingness, asking for their removal, IS NOTHING BUT AN OXYMORON ON THE
GROWTH OF THIS ECONOMY IN QUESTION.

For the peroration, we would like to trace our argument back to the famous chemistry teacher
who also, with his undying spirit for his money-making business, appraised

“"The blowfish puffs himself up four, five times larger than normal because it makes him
intimidating [to] the other scarier fish. It's just an illusion. It's nothing but air. Now, who
messes with the blowfish?"

To that we would like to say, LAW.

LAW WILL MESS WITH THE BLOWFISH.

 FOR THE MOTION

“Resp. jury and my teachers, my fellow mates, honourable guests and all my near and dear

ones. A very GOOD AfterNoon …… to one and all present here.”

I shaarika singh , a stern ENTP who goes by the pronouns she/her with my co-speaker,

Pratyanik Chakraborty, another fellow ENTP take this opportunity to present our views

against the motion of what we frame as “DEBARRING THE PATHS TO STABLE

ECONOMY”. Or, as the House suggests, “imprisonment provisions should be removed

from business laws since they hinder economic growth.”

we would take this opportunity to greet our opposition as well by stating,

"we'd love to have a war of wits with you, but we see that you are unarmed!".

Taking the motion further with the permission of our jury, We would like to give this court a
headstart with the a saying beautifully worded by philosopher HANNAH ARDENT.

“No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the

commission of crimes. On the contrary, whatever the punishment, once a specific crime

has appeared for the first time, its reappearance is more likely than its initial emergence

could ever have been.”

Punishment such as prison time has been associated with the theories such as

Retributive theory, Deterence and Preventive. There has been vast amount of literature

that shows that Retributive Deterent or Preventive punishments doesn’t work in

practical as much as it is shown in theory. Rather these theories does the exact opposite

or affects the society in any other unintended way. For example, after the introduction
of the new motor vehicle act amendment in 2019, the Indian personal vehicle market

saw a substantial drop in sale.

Jail provision in business laws are just the enactment of these theories in practice. Like

any other domain of law: retributive, preventive or deterent punishments in business

laws has the same effect as any other domain. Harshad Mehta was imprisoned for 5

years in 1992 but did not stop Ketan Parekh from under taking his fairshare of stock

manipulation or Satyma from doing the accounting fraud. Talking of Satyam fraud, it

was an awakening for the all corporate governance practice in India but that did not

stop any company from accounting fraud or having criminally worse corporate

governance practice. Just after 3 years of Satyam in my own state, we saw the huge

Sardha Scam. In International scenario, after the Layhmen Brother meltdown of 2008,

huge names were imprisoned including the CEO of Layhmen Brothers. But is it stoping

the banks today from doing similar thing? Silicon Valley Bank says otherwise.

At this juncture, I would like to invite my co-speaker for taking our argument

further.
It is quite clear that these jail or retributive or preventive does not prevent or lower the

number of violation of such statutes. To again return back to our motion which focuses

on the ease of doing business. A provision that pin point such punishment are heavily

disadvatagious for micro small and medium businesses (“MSME(s)”).

Given the current market rate it will take atleast 10-15 thousand rupees to have an audit

of a private company or few thousand less than that for an LLP. An MSME making

profits that they make, will they be able to hire an external auditor to audit and then

sustain their business? Failing to which they may attract jail time upto 6 month under

companies act 2013 or time specified or prescribed under in LLP act.

Further, a provision like section 29 of Sarfesi Act 2002 substantially discourages an

MSME from taking loan to run the business where there is always a potential risk of

Partners or Directors of such MSME shall end up in prison.

As per a Observer Research foundation finding, India Currently has more than 26,134

specific statutes in various legislations that deals with imprisonment in Business laws.

The Companies Act 2013 alone, read with 14 of its rules, has more than 170

imprisonment clauses. The same finding points out that “A typical MSME with more

than 150 employees faces 500 to 900 compliances that cost Rs 12 lakh to Rs 18 lakh a

year.” and failing to which half of these compliances- there shall be jial provisions. In

106 laws studied by ORF under the category of Commercial laws, which includes laws
 such as electricity act, food safety and standard act etc- which a street vendor even gets

affected by has more than 1,346 provisions relating to impressionment.

A big business with a truck full of lawyers like us can easily get a bail or sustain a

criminal litigation. An MSME with meger profit margins, whose business will shut

down once they are imprisoned, shall be always worried about such provisions resulting

into inprisonments. Resulting into badly affecting the ease of doing business for such

enterprises. What are we making? a state where you can be jailed for just doing

business?

Today, we are having this debate with this sugar coated motion but the actual debate has been

there in it’s crudest form, the actual debate is whether there should be a proper laissez faire

practice or not? These over jail provision is nothing but the state interfering with the ease of

doing business and this over interference might not be a problem for your Nifty 50s or Sensex

30s but this will substantially affect the ease of doing business for all 80 start-ups that

incorporartes itself in India. These over regulation shall increase the psychological bar for

their entry and in turn adversely affect the common people. It high time, as John Lenon

would put it, we should “Give Peace a chance!”