The Hindu Business Line : KISS of change

The Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences is changing the lives of Orissa’s tribal children, giving them food, clothing and vocational training free.

Nurturing dreams: Besides formal education, boys and girls are trained to earn a livelihood.

Ambar Singh Roy

Thirteen-year-old Rajkishore Murmu, a Santhal from Orissa’s Keonjhar district, had never stepped outside his State till last September. As Captain of the under-14 rugby team of the Bhubaneswar-based Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS), a residential school of 5,000 tribal students drawn from across 23 tribal-dominated districts of Orissa, he found himself aboard a “fearful flight” to London. A few days later, he and his teammates returned home to a rousing reception amidst chants of “Chak de Orissa”. His team had won the Touraid under-14 International School Rugby Tournament held in London.

Today, a confident Rajkishore wants to lead his team to victory in the under-15, under-17 and under-19 world rugby championships as also the Commonwealth Games and the forthcoming Asian Games. His Vice-Captain, Bikash Murmu, was “mesmerised” with the trip to London, and found the in-flight food “awesome”.

Lachhimi Challan, a 16-year-old Bonda tribal from remote Malkangiri, lost his father three years ago.

Today, his only aim is to complete his formal education and “go home and bring other children from my village to a place like this to study”. Dilip Gomango, 14, a Langisaria tribal, and Nilambar Pangi, a Gabada tribal from Koraput, want to become doctors and go back to their roots to serve their fellow villagers, who now have to travel 10-15 km to reach the nearest primary healthcare centre.

Sangita Kirsani, a Bonda tribal girl, is looking forward to completing her high school education at KISS. She then wants to go back to her village in Padaiguda, Malkangiri, and “spread awareness about the need for education among boys and girls”. Her compatriot Budhei Sirsa wants to put the vocational skills she has acquired at KISS to good use. She wants to set up a micro enterprise, possibly a tailoring outfit. “I want to empower them economically by providing them vocational training, and then jobs”, she says.

Narendra Banara, a Mankedia tribal (named after monkeys because they live atop trees), who grew up on a staple diet of fruits and barks of trees that grow in the deep forests of Mayurbhanj district, has a different dream. “When I leave this place, I shall go back to my village and establish another KISS there so that I can bring fellow villagers out of darkness and, hopefully, enlighten them”, he says.

Man and his mission

But for the KISS initiative, Rajkishore, Bikash, Lachhimi, Dilip, Sangita, Narendra and many others would never have known that there was a world that existed outside the confines of their villages. And the credit for all this goes to a person who lost his father at the age of four and was brought up in “abject poverty”. To support his family and his own education, the young boy sold bananas and coconut in the local market. After obtaining an M.Sc. in Chemistry, Achyuta Samanta taught in colleges under Utkal University. His true calling, however, lay elsewhere and in 1992 he established an ITI in Bhubaneswar in a one-room rented premise and with two students. Today, the KIIT University that it has metamorphosed into has 10 campuses spread over 300 acres and boasts of nearly 10,000 students.

Samanta’s long-term dream was not just ensuring the success of KIIT — which is the youngest Indian university to bag awards from the Limca Book of Records for four different categories simultaneously. His vision was to set up an institution that would provide education with boarding facilities and vocational training to poor children from tribal-dominated districts of Orissa, a State where tribals comprise 23.13 per cent of the population.

Thus was born KISS, in 1993, as a play school with 100 tribal children whose parents were daily labourers. “Imparting quality education to a deprived child is like providing eyesight to the blind. In today’s competitive world, it’s education alone that will provide redemption from poverty and deprivation”, says Samanta, who is proud that there has not been a single dropout from those enrolled at KISS.

Today, this large residential tribal school is home to 5,000 students from 53 tribes and in the 5-20 age group, who are educated, clothed, fed and provided vocational training free of charge.

Spread over 20 acres, the school is affiliated to the State Education Board and KISS has just received permission to conduct undergraduate courses in science, business administration and computer application. Besides formal education, boys and girls at KISS get vocational training aimed at facilitating their “gainful engagement and sustainable livelihood”, says Prashanta Routray, CEO of KISS.

Training in poultry and dairy farming, agriculture and food processing is provided over a 30-acre plot and “the skills they acquire are applicable in their own domains in their villages”. All effort is made to maintain their tribal cultures and heritage.

A ‘KG to PG’ vision

In the last four years, the pass-out rate at the Class X level has been 100 per cent. In the last three years, KISS students bagged honours at the National School Science Congress, prompting the then President, Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, to visit the KISS campus twice. Students have also been invited to present papers at the Indian Science Congress. Other high-profile visitors to KISS include Nobel laureates, Captains of Indian industry, senior Indian and US politicians, eminent academicians, Bollywood stars and Indian cricketers. Says Samanta: “I was a poor child whom God blessed with quality education. Not every poor child is as fortunate. It is my life’s mission and passion to serve the poor in society in whatever way I can”. For him, the immediate roadmap is to replicate the KISS initiative in other parts of Orissa, before expanding the footprint to other States in India. Land for the purpose has already been purchased in 20 tribal-dominated districts of Orissa. The idea also is to transform KISS into a “KG to PG tribal university” with 10,000 students by 2010.

Funds required to run the institution are generated from various sources, including industry and individual donors. The average cost per child per year is Rs 12,000.

More Stories on : Rural Development | Children & Parenting

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