How KISS University is Rewriting India’s Tribal Story

The Past: When Arms Replaced Books

- Prof. Achyuta Samanta

Prof. Achyuta Samanta

The 1990s presented India and Odisha with converging crises. Globalization arrived with promises, but for tribal communities, liberalisation, industrialization and globalisation (LPG Raj) meant displacement. Industrial corridors were being carved through ancestral lands. The adivasis of Odisha found themselves pushed to society's margins, watching their forests vanish and their futures evaporate. Maoist insurgency found ground in this despair. Young adivasis, seeing no future, picked up arms instead of textbooks.

I witnessed this firsthand when I was twenty-five years old, almost three and a half decades back. Tribal children dreams extended no further than survival. Education was unthinkable. Health care existed only in reports. In that moment, a clarity emerged. The permanent solution could only be quality education and not tokenistic intervention but a complete solution addressing every barrier.

The present: Building Hope at Scale