Under an innovative scheme devised by Dr Achyuta Samanta, the for-profit KIIT University is a means to a greater end: to fund and grow the Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS) which offers 15,000 children and youth from 62 tribes, K-postgraduate free-of-charge fully residential education. Dilip Thakore reports from Bhubaneswar For most citizens of India, the eastern state of Odisha (formerly Orissa, pop. 41 million), off the grand trunk routes and air corridors that link the country’s premier cities, is unfamiliar territory. In the metropolitan press and media, it receives minimal coverage mostly to report either starvation deaths in its backward Kalahandi district and/or Maoist atrocities in the notoriously insurgent Kandhamal district. What’s less known is that this ancient state with a rich history and culture is the region where the great Mauryan Emperor Ashoka (304-232 BC) experienced a historic epiphany after waging the Kalinga war of 261 BC, which led him to embrace ahimsa (non-violence), one of the main tenets of Buddhism to which he converted after the war. Odisha is also famed for its magnificient 13th century Sun Temple at Konark, and the mighty Jagannath Temple (11th century) whose three main deities are hauled on a huge and elaborately decorated rath (chariot), and dragged through the seaside town of Puri by devotees in June-July every year. First-time visitors to Odisha (such as your correspondent) are likely to be pleasantly surprised by the smooth double carriageways and neat bungalows of its green administrative capital Bhubaneswar (pop.1.9 million), and the quiet purpose with which its people tend to their business. Unheralded and unsung, the city has developed an impressive civic infrastructure, and latterly, has emerged as eastern India’s new academic centre with aspirations to replace Kolkata (Calcutta) whose once great colleges and universities were plunged into mediocrity and ruin by 34 years of uninterrupted rule of the leveling down Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM), which mercifully ended last summer. The official seal on the emergence of Bhubaneswar as a new hub of higher education, was conferred on this charming city when it was selected by the 22,000-strong Kolkata-based Indian Science Congress Association (ISCA, estb. 1914) to host its 99th Indian Science Congress (ISC) between January 3-7. With the focal theme of ‘Science & Technology for Inclusive Innovation — Role of Women’, the ISC was inaugurated by prime minister Dr. Manmohan Singh and attracted the world’s top women scientists and 18,000 delegates, who presented 1,500 research papers at the three-day conclave. Whether any meaningful output commensurate with the time, money and effort invested emerged from the 99th ISC is doubtful, because Indian science continues to be characterised by shallow research and plagiarism, with little to show by way of new knowledge or inventions. However, the organisationally successful ISC served the useful purpose of showcasing the administrative capabilities and notable academic progress and development of KIIT University — initially promoted as the Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology in 1992-93, and granted deemed university status by the University Grants Commission in 2004. One…
