Achyuta Samanta

Achyuta Samanta is an Indian educationist who built two institutions in Bhubaneswar: the Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology, a private university founded in 1992, and the Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences, a residential school and university for indigenous children that he set up alongside it.

His own circumstances shaped the work. His father was killed in an accident when Samanta was four, leaving his mother to raise seven children in poverty; he took a master's degree in chemistry at Utkal University and began teaching. Odisha's Adivasi communities make up close to a quarter of the state's population and remain among the most deprived in India, and KISS was founded to remove cost as a barrier to their schooling. It opened in 1992-93 in a rented house with 125 tribal students.

KISS provides free tuition, lodging, food and healthcare, and now runs from kindergarten through to postgraduate and doctoral study, with vocational and sporting training alongside academic work. More than 30,000 indigenous students are enrolled at the Bhubaneswar campus and around 10,000 more at satellite centres opened from 2020 in Baripada, Balangir, Kalahandi and Balasore; the institution counts some 40,000 alumni and has set itself the goal of educating two million indigenous children. Its sports programme has made it a South Asian hub for FIFA's Football for Schools and FIVB's Volleyball for Schools. In 2013 Samanta began the Art of Giving, an initiative promoting everyday acts of kindness and sharing.

He was elected to the Lok Sabha from Kandhamal in Odisha in 2019 for the Biju Janata Dal, concentrating on education, tribal development and rural welfare, and stepped away from active politics in 2024.

KISS received the UNESCO King Sejong Literacy Prize in 2022 and an International Green Gown Award for diversity, equity and inclusion in 2023. Samanta has been given the ISA Award for Service to Humanity by Bahrain in 2015, the Gusi Peace Prize in 2014 and a large number of honorary doctorates.[2][3]