National Finance Conclave 2010 Held at KIIT

KSRM 4th Foundation Day Lecture
Only Education Can Eradicate Poverty: NRLM Director

Shri Nandan Nilekani, UIDAI Chairman & Co-Founder, Infosys delivers Pradyumna Bal Memorial Lecture at KIIT

KISS Students Selected for Sub Junior National Kabaddi Championship

National Finance Conclave 2010 Held at KIIT

Country’s top finance executives, managers and consultants discussed the role of finance sector in inclusive growth at the National Finance Conclave-2010 organised by KIIT School of Management, a constituent of KIIT University, on 27th November 2010. The conclave was inaugurated by Dr. K. C. Chakrabarty, Deputy Governor, RBI and Dr. K. G. Karmakar, MD, NABARD in the presence of Prof. A. S. Kolaskar, Vice Chancellor, KIIT University.

Inaugurating the conclave, Dr. Chakrabarty said that inclusion of the poor and unbanked in the nation’s fast economic growth has always been a priority. Even as the economy is growing at over 9% a year, the 11th Five Year Plan (2007-12) focuses on ‘Faster and More Inclusive Growth’, he said. The RBI Dy. Governor, however, cited studies that point out that the formal financial institutions have not yet reached a significant proportion of population, mostly poor. A change need to be brought about through innovation in methodologies, availability of financial products, appropriate delivery channels and partnerships across sectors, he prescribed.

The country has a vast network of over 70,000 bank branches, 66% of which are in rural and semi-urban areas, informed Dr. K. G. Karmakar. Additionally, there are 94,000 cooperative outlets (mainly rural), 13,000 non-banking finance companies and emerging microfinance institutions, he said, adding that ATMs and post bank branches are also increasing rapidly. Increasing acceptance of insurance, mutual fund and capital market products in rural areas are also steps towards achieving inclusive growth, Dr. Karmakar said.  

The visiting dignitaries appreciated the initiatives of Dr. A. Samanta, Founder, KIIT & KISS in the fields of professional education and social service.

Speaking on the occasion, Prof. A. S. Kolaskar hoped that the deliberations at conclave would result in important insights which would be helpful in meeting new challenges in the financial sector and achieve inclusive growth. Prof. Ashok Sar, Dean, KIIT School of Management also spoke on the occasion.   

Invited speakers at the conclave included corporate bigwigs like Mr. V. Ashok, CFO, Essar Group; Mr. M. R. Nayak, Executive Director, Allahabad Bank Ltd.; Mr. Debashis Mohanty, Country Head, UTI AMC Ltd.; Mr. Tridev Khandelwal, Associate Director, SR Batliboi & Associates and Mr. Sukanta Nag, Executive VP, CARE Ratings. The event generated much interest among executives, managers, teachers, students, consultants and officials handling finance, banking, accounting and business development matters in government/ non-government/public sector undertakings.

KSRM 4th Foundation Day Lecture
Only Education Can Eradicate Poverty: NRLM Director

There would be no poverty if education could be spread to every corner of the country, said Mr. T. Vijay Kumar, IAS, Director of National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM), Govt. of India. He delivered the 4th Foundation Day Lecture of KIIT School of Rural Management (KSRM), a constituent of KIIT University, on 20th November 2010.

We are yet to reach the goal of equitable development, he said, while pointing out that terrorism and Naxalites are main obstacles to development. Outlining Government’s initiative for development of the tribal community, he said IRDP was launched in 1980 to eradicate poverty. The project evolved over time and was termed SGSY in 1999 and, subsequently, National Rural Livelihood Mission.

Government has taken a long term perspective on poverty, he informed, adding that this was also discussed in 1991 SAARC Summit. The NRLM Director also explained success achieved through organizing Women into Self Help Groups in Andhra, Bihar, UP and other parts of the country. Advocating Balawadi center in every village, he said it plays an important role in creating awareness among the women to take care herself and pregnant women, besides laying emphasis on education of children.

He was pleasantly surprised to know that Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS) provides education, vocational training, accommodation, food and all basic necessities to 12,000 tribal children free of cost.

Dr. A. Samanta, Founder, KIIT & KISS expressed gratitude to Mr. T. Vijay Kumar for delivering the lecture at KSRM and illuminating students on the important subject of poverty and its eradication. Dr. L. K. Vaswani, Director, KSRM also spoke on the occasion.

KISS Humanitarian Award 2010 Conferred on Mauritius President

The KISS Humanitarian Award 2010 was conferred on Sir Anerood Jugnauth, His Excellency the President of Mauritius for his contribution towards the society. He received the award from Dr. A. Samanta, Founder, KISS and KIIT on the occasion of Children's Day celebration at KISS on 14th November 2010. Lady Sarojni Jugnauth, Hon’ble First Lady of Mauritius also graced the occasion. 

KISS Humanitarian Award is conferred every year on great personalities who work for the development of the society. Previous recipients of the award have been Ms Madam Bomo Edna Molewa, Hon'ble Cabinet Minister, (Social Devt) South Africa, National Assembly (2008) and Dr. Ham Kee-Sun, President and Founder, Hanseo University, South Korea (2009).

Receiving the award, the President of Mauritius advocated brotherhood between people of India and Mauritius. Sir Jugnauth, who is of Indian origin, said that people of Mauritius have high regard for Mahatma Gandhi and Indira Gandhi. He also addressed 12,000 students of KISS and commended Dr. Samanta for taking initiative for the development of tribals through education.

He advised the students to be patriotic for the country, while calling upon teachers to ensure that the students pass out as good citizens. Value based education was a moral obligation he added. Addressing the students of KISS on the occasion of children's day he said education sans values did not mean much. Over the years there have been serious erosion of values in society. What Mauritius is today is principally because of its strong education base, he said.

Reminiscing the British rule days, he said when Mauritius was a colony and injustice was inflicted on the locals, Mahatma Gandhi never forgot them. Gandhiji had sent Manilal Maganlal Doctor to Mauritius who represented Indo-Mauritians in the courts.

He said Gandhiji had stopped at Mauritius on his way from South Africa to India to visited the colony. After Manilal arrived he first established community schools. Today Mauritius provides education free of cost till University level. He added children will be leaders of tomorrow and it is duty of the Government to make them healthy and responsible human beings, while education is mandatory till the age of sixteen. The Government recently decided to make transport free. He said the Republic would never forget what India and Gandhiji did for the emancipation of the people.

First couple of Mauritius mingled with the 12000 students of KISS & went round the campus and lauded the initiative to provide a total education atmosphere by its Founder Secretary, Achyuta Samanta and his team.

Dr. Samanta, Founder, KIIT & KISS expressed his sincere thanks and gratitude to Sir Anerood Jugnauth, His Excellency the President of Mauritius and Lady Sarojni Jugnauth, Hon’ble First Lady of Mauritius. On the occasion Dr. Samanta said His Excellency Sir Jugnauth was the first President of a country other than India to visit the campus. Among others, Mrs. Saswati Bal, President of KISS & KIIT, Prof. A. S. Kolaskar, VC, KIIT and Dr. P.K. Das, Director of Livelihood, KISS were present.

Later in the evening, Sir Anerood Jugnauth was felicitated at a special Public Felicitation ceremony organized in his honour at Jayadev Bhawan.

78th Birth Anniversary of Pradyumna Bal
Shri Nandan Nilekani, UIDAI Chairman & Co-Founder, Infosys delivers Pradyumna Bal Memorial Lecture at KIIT

78th Birth Anniversary of Late Pradyumna Bal, Noted Parliamentarian, Journalist and Founder President of KIIT was celebrated in KIIT premises on 7th November 2010. Shri Naveen Patnaik, Hon’ble Chief Minister of Odisha graced the occasion as the Chief Guest, while Shri Nandan Nilekani, Hon’ble Chairman, Unique Identity Authority of India (UIDAI) and Co-Founder, Infosys delivered the Pradyumna Bal Memorial Lecture. Dr. Omkarnath Mohanty, eminent educationist and former Vice Chancellor, Biju Patnaik University of Technology (BPUT) presided over the function. Smt. Saswati Bal, President, KIIT & KISS was also present on the occasion. 

Paying rich tribute to Late Pradyumna Bal, Shri Naveen Patnaik said that contribution of Shri Bal in Odisha politics is unfathomable. His socialistic ideals, struggle and sacrifice for the people remain examples for other to emulate, he said. He congratulated Pradyumna Bal Memorial Trust for organizing this function to commemorate his birth anniversary every year.      

Delivering the memorial lecture, Shri Nilekani said that at least 60 crore people will have their Unique Identification cards in the next four years. “Around 42,000 cards have already been issued till date,” said the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIAI) chairperson.

 “We are trying to use technology to solve basic development problems,” he said, adding that a large number of population in the country, essentially the poor, do not have any documentary proof.  There exists an “Identity divide” which is not felt by the urban mass. Not having an identity means not being able to access public private services, he elaborated.

The UIDAI chairperson said the citizens of the country were becoming increasingly mobile. Of the population of 1.18 billion, 120 million are migrants, and if dependent family members are taken into consideration, the number of such people would touch 450 million. Lack of acknowledged identity compounded their problem resulting in harassment by the system and ending up being non person in the society, Shri Nilekani said, while conceding that giving them the identity is a challenge.

Moreover, the increasing number of social welfare programmes both by the Centre and the state should see that the money spent should reach the real beneficiaries. Referring to the benefits of UID number or the Adhaar number, he said it would help identify the real beneficiary so that the benefits are delivered effectively. The UID number, therefore, will help people in getting essential services such as PDS, bank account, gas connection and access to essential services at a new place.

Elaborating on the challenges in this project, Shri Nilekani said the biggest one being the database that includes fraud, ghost and false information. For this, the bio-metric system is being used to prevent duplication. Further, there is de-duplication exercise in which the information given by any new applicant will be screened against the existing data in the UIN list, he said.

Speaking on the occasion, Dr. A. Samanta, Founder, KIIT & KISS said that vision of Late Pradyumna Bal remains a guiding light for KIIT Group of Institutions. He expressed gratitude to the Hon’ble Chief Minister of Odisha and the UIDAI Chairman for their gracious presence on this auspicious occasion.      
 
Social activist Shri Ghanasyama Sahoo was conferred this year’s Pradyumna Bal Memorial Trust award in recognition to his service to the society. Dr. Omkarnath Mohanty, former Vice Chancellor, BPUT and Member of Pradyumna Bal Memorial Trust, Ms. Bratati Bal also spoke on the occasion.

KISS Students Selected for Sub Junior National Kabaddi Championship

On behalf of National Kabadi Association the 22nd Sub Junior Kabaddi Championship will be organized at Jammu from 10th to 13th November, 2010.  Two girls and two boys of Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences, KISS have been selected for this championship.

The four students were selected through the selection trail held at Deogarh. Boys selected are Rabindra Behera and Jitu Hembram. Girls team includes Sakuntala Chalan and Ashru Marandi.

Dr. A. Samanta, Founder, KIIT and KISS expressed satisfaction over the remarkable achievement of the students of KISS.

‘In India, A Top Private University Supports a School for Tribal People’
Source : The Chronicle of Higher Education, Global Edition, http://chronicle.com/article/In-India-a-Top-Private/125169/ (Accessed on 2nd November 2010)
By Shailaja Neelakantan

As the Founder of KIIT University, a top private institution here, Achyuta Samanta has built an institution that occupies dozens of buildings across 350 acres of plush land. Yet he has no office.

He prefers to do his work at a desk under a fragrant Kadamba tree, in a garden outside a University building where he meets foreign diplomats, Indian movie stars, journalists, and other visitors. Many treat him with reverence; some even touch his feet as if he were a modern-day Buddha.

Mr. Samanta politely waves away such adulation, but to many local people and higher-education officials, what he has created is nothing short of remarkable.

With little more than $100 and 12 students, Mr. Samanta in 1993 established a technical-training institute, the Kalinga Insitute of Industrial Technology, that eventually earned approval to provide undergraduate courses in engineering—the Holy Grail for a private Indian college. Later the government granted it University status in record time.

The courses at KIIT University have expanded to include management, biosciences, and law,. To build his teaching staff, Mr. Samanta attracted high-quality professors from across India, as well as a few from the United States and Canada, by offering two to three times the salaries they would earn at other top Indian institutions.

Today the University has 16,000 students and consistently ranks in the top 30 to 40 Indian private higher-education institutions.

KIIT University "is definitely the top University in Odisha, and we rank them among the top private universities in India," says Premchand Palety, Chief Executive of the Centre for Forecasting and Research, which ranks universities in India.

But Mr. Samanta says he did not start KIIT University to make money or earn personal prestige. He started it as a means to support the Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences, a charitable effort to aid the desperately poor, indigenous tribal people of this southeastern state by offering them free education. (There are 62 tribes in Odisha and about 700 in all of India.)

"After 63 years of independence, they are so neglected and in such a wretched condition, they don't get one square meal a day," Mr. Samanta says. "Poverty in Odisha is more than the poverty in Congo."

While the social-sciences institute and KIIT University are separate entities, they are fundamentally tied together. Mr. Samanta founded them at the same time, and he uses the $3,400-per-student tuition he charges at the University to support the institute. The University provides the institute with 5 percent of its annual profits, and faculty members voluntarily donate 3 percent of their salaries to it.

The Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences, known as KISS, has 10,000 students, and offers a full range of educational services, including primary and secondary school, vocational education, and undergraduate and graduate courses. It's what Mr. Samanta and his staff like to call "a KG to PG" institution, that is, kindergarten to postgraduate. (In India, graduate programs are referred to as postgraduate programs.)

For the past nine years, all his tribal students entering grade 12—many of whom had probably never seen a chalkboard before they enrolled in KISS—have graduated. By comparison, Indian public high schools graduate only 60 to 70 percent of their senior classes, on average.

KISS's vocational, undergraduate, and graduate programs complement one another, Mr. Samanta says, because the vocational courses teach students how to "earn while they learn." While they study in college, he says, they can continue to send a third of their earnings—about $15 to $20—to their parents. For people who may be living on as little as a dollar a day, it's a significant amount.

KIIT University and the social-sciences institute are housed on a vast campus that is on par with the best Indian universities, with air-conditioned buildings, wireless Internet, multimedia classrooms, laboratories, and conference halls. The campus feels like an ashram with walkways connecting airy buildings and small ponds scattered throughout the grounds.

Despite the idyllic setting, for Mr. Samanta, the road to his success was anything but peaceful.

He grew up destitute in Odisha. His father died when he was 4, and he had to work to support himself from the age of 6 while attending school. Eventually he earned a graduate degree in chemistry.

In the early years of building the Kalinga institutions, debt collectors hounded him for the money he borrowed to start them. In 1995, he resolved to kill himself out of despair because his dream of helping the poorest of the poor was crumbling. "I had no way to pay it back, and people wanted their money back," says Mr. Samanta. At the 11th hour, a sympathetic loan officer from a local bank bailed him out—not only for the $32,000 he owed, but also giving him $56,000 to continue his efforts.

Now a spry 45-year-old, Mr. Samanta chuckles at the suicidal despair of his younger days. While he is still owes money for loans he's taken to build the University's top-class infrastructure, his efforts have offered assistance that observers say is crucial for Odisha's future.

Many tribal people in Odisha and in other poor states are joining a Maoist rebellion in droves—helping the rebels to gain control over a vast swath of eastern India. Many tribesmen join the rebels out of ignorance and because their lack of education leaves them with no real alternatives, Mr. Samanta says. "See, poverty creates illiteracy and literacy eradicates poverty. The moment one is literate all problems will be over, and I'm the best example."

The word about KISS has grown steadily in Odisha's poor interiors, and for the past three years the institute has been getting about 50,000 applications a year.

"I had financial problems, but I wanted to be self-dependent, so I was tutoring some students when I heard about this free institute," says Subhakar Singh, a second-year college student from the Mayurbhanj district, who entered the social-sciences institute in his junior year of high school. "This is a great institution, and now I also want to teach tribals," says the chemistry major.

KISS is also known for providing personalized attention to its students. "In school, it was each to his own, nobody cared about you," says Basu Hembram, from the Dhenkanal district, who entered KISS in eighth grade. "Here they care about each one of us," says the second-year sociology major.

True to his original vision, Mr. Samanta has big plans for KISS. He wants to start sending 30 or 40 students per year to the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology and another 30 to the competitive Indian Administrative Service, the country's civil service.

As for KIIT University, he doesn't have big changes in mind, saying that expanding it could threaten its quality.

Says Mr. Samanta, chuckling: "With its reputation, I can open a KIIT University branch in every state, but I'm not like that."