Founder-professor Achyuta Samanta of KIIT & KISS institutes of Odisha provided the required study material and other daily essentials to the underprivileged students during the pandemic-induced lockdown
The COVID-19 pandemic has largely hit the State of Odisha. Many organisations and individuals have come forward to supplement the government’s efforts to deal with the emergent situation. Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology (KIIT), Bhubaneswar, and its sister institution Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS), under the leadership of its founder-professor Achyuta Samanta, have also been taking a series of initiatives since the beginning of the Coronavirus outbreak and have been at the forefront of Odisha’s war against the virus.
Kalinga Institute of Medical Sciences (KIMS), a constituent of KIIT Deemed to be University, also set up four ultra-modern dedicated to COVID hospitals with the support of the Government of Odisha, located in Bhubaneswar and its three tribal-dominated districts. The hospitals have a bed capacity of 1,200. KIMS COVID Hospital in Bhubaneswar, a 500-bedded state-of-the-art facility including 50 critical care beds, is India’s first standalone COVID hospital.
The KIIT & KISS also reached out to various groups facing hardships due to the extended lockdown. The intervention included the distribution of food material and other essentials to over three lakh pandemic-hit people, including the underprivileged people living in various slums, stranded migrant labourers, who were also provided temporary shelter, and people living in containment zones.
Community outreach activities of KIIT & KISS strived to reach the hardest-hit and commonly overlooked people — transgenders, sportspersons, physically-challenged, sex workers, etc. They were provided with allowances to cope with the prolonged lockdown. Food materials and cash to meet other expenses for three months were given to priests and other workers of several spiritual centres in Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, Puri and nearby towns. The two institutions are providing groceries and cash for miscellaneous expenses to over 40 orphanages, old-age homes and leprosy centres in Kandhamal district.
The student community is one of the worst-affected groups in the COVID-19 pandemic. KISS is home to 30,000 tribal students from interior districts of Odisha pursuing their studies from Standard-I to PG/PhD level. Days before the outbreak, they were sent to their respective homes in various districts of Odisha. As the students stayed inside their homes, KISS sent out required study material and generous amount of dry foods at their doorstep every month, since April. The monthly material also contain sanitary napkins for the adolescent girls. The initiative will continue till the reopening of KISS.
A series of measures to keep its students safe and healthy as well as ensuring that they remain connected to studies was also ensured. Professor Samanta, who has always put the education of these tribal students above everything else, arranged for the textbooks, study materials and dried food items to be provided at the students' doorsteps at the start of the new academic year. KISS was one of the early institutes to begin online classes and has been maintaining the academic schedule perfectly for students of all levels.
Inspired by the Prime Minister’s call for ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ (self-reliant India), KISS has levelled up its vocational skill centre during the COVID-19 pandemic. The centre has been scaled up to become a medium-sized industry and is now making 25 different types of vocational products. These products are marketted through well-developed distribution channel, besides fulfilling the in-house requirement of KIIT & KISS. The sale proceeds from the centre are expected to make KISS self-reliant in the coming times.
In a unique humanitarian gesture, KIIT Deemed to be University has decided to provide free education to the children of the COVID deceased in Odisha. The facility will be available for two academic years — 2020-21 and 2021-22.
KIIT & KISS also paid special attention to the orphan children, belonging to the poorer sections of society, who are vulnerable to become victims of child abuse and human trafficking. The institutes have adopted and are taking care of about 100 such orphans and providing them monthly allowance ranging from Rs 5,000 to Rs 10,000, depending upon the family size. As and when the academic institutions reopen, they will be provided free education and subsequently complete higher education in the institutes.
It’s professor Samanta’s personal childhood experience of hunger and poverty after his father’s demise at the age of four, which makes him work harder for the society’s underprivileged children.