Bhubaneswar: The first semester students of School of Mass Communication, KIIT Deemed to Be University visited Kalarabanka, a smart village in Cuttack district of Odisha on October 6, 2018 as a part of exposure trip for Communication, Culture and Society paper.
During the exposure trip, the students visited different facilities including Kalarabanka High School, Kalinga English Medium School, Anadi Samanta Memorial Hospital (KIMS Rural Health Centre with Tele-medicine facility), Community Hall, Canteen and temple complexes. They also went to several households and interacted with the family members belonging to various strata of the society. Their interaction and data collection was broadly themed on issues like livelihood, health & sanitation, education, communication and infrastructure, and marriage and family planning.
Expressing pleasure, Nidhi Nyari, a student said, “Such trips make us realize how some people are connected to their roots. We learnt about all the improvisations being done for the betterment of rural areas. Beyond the aim of this trip: we saw not much of urbanization, lets those people value family time.”
On a same note, Soumi Banerjee, another student expressed that it was a great experience. Everyone in the village was cooperative. “It really helped me to learn new things and also I had practical experience of taking interviews,” she added.
“A wonderful experience! Worth visiting! We learnt especially that Journalism is not always distress journalism, but also covers positive and inspiring stories”, said Sivani Sangeeta. However, all the students expressed that it was a memorable trip and the experiences will be cherished forever.
While, her classmate Tanushree Mishra praising the generous efforts of Dr Samanta said that although some improvements are yet to be made but decent levels of standard of living has been reached in Kalarabanka. She added,” All these kind of exposures inspire and motivate us to work for the society.”
Notably, inspired by his mother Shrimati Nilimarani Samanta, noted educational entrepreneur, social activist and reformer Dr Achyuta Samanta started to develop his native place as a ‘Model Village’ in 2000. On June 5, 2006, ‘Kalarabank Model Village’ was inaugurated by Shri Rameswar Thakur, Governor of Odisha.