Dr Achyut Samanta, a visionary founder of Odisha’s leading educational institutes, KISS and KIIT, is on a new mission. Using his own role model of achieving unprecedented success despite coming from an underprivileged background, he wants to change India’s thinking by launching a campaign against “negativity” while advocating “giving”. He had floated two forums, Art of Giving (AoG) and India Against Negativity (IAN) and roped in eminent intellectuals, scholars, jurists to propagate the twin ideas. He strongly believes, if these two tributes can make propel him to build an institution that now teaches 21,000 students and a campus with ultra-modern facilities, any other could also do so.

Launched by ever-supporting Odisha’s Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on August 31, 2014, the IAN is an initiative to annihilate negativity from a civil and democratic society. According to Samanta, frustration, disillusionment and distrust perceived towards professionalism, ethical and social values help growth in cynicism. These factors, however, do not lead to any solution, rather cause harm to people individually and collectively. It is duty of all of us to protect every possible optimistic view and to protest the victims of negativity, he advises.

The unique forum, the only one of its kind is headquartered at Bhubaneswar, with regional offices at all 30 districts of Odisha and national offices at New Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Chennai, Patna and Ranchi. It had already generated overwhelming response as over 10,000 members have already been enrolled as members of IAN reaffirming their trust in such a forum. Few of the luminaries on the forum’s advisory board include Justice M M Das, former Judge High Court of Odisha who is the Vice Chairman. Other eminent personalities are members.