12-Oct-2026

By: Vansh Tyagi, MUN Program Director 

A football stadium with 80,000 spectators. The crowd is roaring loudly, emotions are high, and the match is on the line. Despite it all, the captain’s most important role isn't to score a goal, but to offer a calm word to the team, a measured instruction, or a balanced gesture. The same is followed by renowned captains like Lionel Messi or Luka Modric, whose leadership style is calm and informed. In a world where people make loud noises, young people often mistake volume for conviction and aggression for leadership. The central question with us is: Does the strongest argument belong to the loudest person in the room? Arguments which are assertive and aggressive are not twins. The arguments which are aggressive seek victory, while assertive arguments look for understanding, which means that aggression silences the other coercively, while assertiveness engages the other by influence. In international relations as a discipline, there are 3 types of power, which are Hard Power (military, police, coercive forms), Soft Power (dialogue, art, media, etc) and Smart Power (combination of both hard and soft power). Nations in the contemporary world have opted for smart power, which is the ideal form of relations for both international and individual relations. Hard power compels acquiescence. Soft power invites cooperation. Smart power recognizes that lasting influence often lies in knowing when to persuade and when to assert. The same principle applies to leadership. The new beginning to the world of arguments should be that a leader ought to argue for solving problems but not winning arguments. The architecture of a strong argument should have the idea that curiosity must be respected before certainty. Arguments should be placed after listening, with reasons. We should have the ability to say: "I may be wrong." "I had not considered that perspective." "Let me rethink my position." The Tarkashastra teaches that logic is not a tool to defeat the other but to discover the truth. In this era of social media, every stakeholder, including our leaders, is in a fight to defeat the other, neglecting the discovery of truth. Perchance leadership is not measured by how loudly one speaks, but by how many people feel heard after the conversation ends.