GREAT ACHIEVER SAMANT IS NOT ACCEPTABLE AS ‘MAHATMA'!
Biswaraj Patnaik
As millions across the world remembered Mahatma Gandhi and Lal Bhahadur Shastri with love and reverence on 2 October, many in India were surprised to know the addition of another ‘Mahatma' from Odisha. The Aditya Birla group for which the stinkingly wealthy BJD leader Santrupta Mishra worked for decades, has bestowed the coveted award on Achyut Samant, the founder of KiiT and KiSS organisations. Samant is famous for both being an ‘education entrepreneur' and a big social worker of a special kind. This good guy, once upon a time, was a close associate of the late statesman-media biggie Pradyumna Bal who had set up a management institute in Bhubaneswar called Institute of Business Administration and Training (IBAT) way back in 1990s when Samant was only a nondescript demonstrator or junior-grade lecturer at some private college in Bhubaneswar. As fate was destined to smile upon him, he came in close contact with Shri Bal looking for energetic, ambitious young men and women to run his organisation. Samant was so humble and obedient that Bal was morally compelled to make him his chief lieutenant. Bal died earlier than expected and the lieutenant took over without any resistance from any of the ‘Bal' family members.
Years have rolled by meanwhile. And now history books mention with pride that KIIT School of Management (KSOM) is an unparallaled academic outfit providing fantastic industry-focused management skills to potential corporate masters. Founded in 1993, the IBAT with a vision to make it a trend-setting centre for business education, where young people were exposed to a highly balanced mix of classroom learning and hands-on skill picking sessions to turn them into successful professionals and great leaders.
Today, as part of the prestigious KIIT University, KSOM has spread across the whole country with a number of quality centres of learning. Not surprisingly, NAAC has rated KSOM highly to put it in the highest ‘A grade' category. The institutions strongly believe in making business education highly relevant by constant course updates, regular corporate interaction, real life exposure, faculty training and more importantly by instilling in all its stakeholders a deep sense of responsibility to the society at large. Achyut, by sheer hard work and of course some machinations here and there, has attained the proportions of a larger than life figure- so much so as to have the actual founder Pradyumna Bal thrown out of the memory zone of the people of Odisha. The KiiMS medical college structure is perhaps the only object that bears the name of the dream empire's actual founder, which though goes mostly unnoticed.