In 12/2003, the then HRD minister and the president had announced 4 National Institute of Sciences(NIS) at Bhubaneshwar, Chennai, Pune and Allahabad. Recent announcement of IISERs at Pune, Kolkata and Punjab (near Chandigarh) override that. NIS and IISER are the same. Thus Bhubaneswar, Chennai and Allahbad have been robbed of the announced NIS, and the renaming is a subterfuge. The latter 2 have an IIT and an IIIT respectively, so it may not matter to them. But Orissa has no IIT, IISc, IIM, IIIT, CU etc. It is a huge blow to Orissa! THIS WAS OUR INITIAL FIGHT. We had a positive result.

But deja vu again in 2006-07. TOI reported that Union minister of state for HRD MAA Fatmi on 28-8-06 said, "The proposal for one IIT for Bihar and two for Orissa and one Western Indian state besides one IIIT to Bihar will be included in 11th Five Year Plan." W.r.t Orissa he probably referred to one of the 3 new IITs proposed to be in the 11th plan and a branch campus of IIT KGP in BBSR. However, later news reports say that the 3 new IITs will be in Bihar, Rajasthan and AP. Yet again, Orissa was sidelined by MHRD. We fought this and again had success. On March 28th 2008, an IIT for Orissa was announced.

Our next focus issue is making sure Orissa benefits from its mineral resources. Hence our new campaign: "From mineral resources to human resources." Our goal is to convince mining and mine using companies active in Orissa to significantly contribute towards the HRD of Orissa. In particular, we would like to convince private and public sector companies like SAIL, NALCO, NTPC, Arcelor-Mittal, Tata Steel, POSCO etc. that they must establish

(i) a medical college (with very little patient fees) in an interior location,

(ii) an engineering college,

(iii) a management institute,

(iv) several ITIs and K-12 schools, and

(v) contribute to literacy activities in the state such as helping the Pratham campaign.