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Wednesday, Aug 15, 2007
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A proud moment for these boys

Rasheed Kappan

They will play rugby in London

— Photo: Ashoke Chakrabarty

going global: Students of the tribal school of the Kalinga Institute gearing for the rugby tournament, near Bhubaneswar.

BHUBANESWAR: With a rugby ball tucked under their feet, the 12 chosen tribal children posed proudly for the flashbulbs. Five thousand students cheered them on as they stepped up their campaign in style. Surmounting heavy odds, the well-trained rugby team of the Bhubaneswar-based Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS) was now ready to take on the world, representing India at an under-14 international school rugby tournament in London.

For the products of the country’s largest school for tribal communities, rugby was just the right tool to unleash their collective talent. Hitherto dismissed to their miserable tribal hinterland, the students had a mission: to prove their mettle to a world cynically ignorant of the tribal life, their dreams and ambitions.

KISS, a sister concern of the KIIT Deemed University, had picked them out of their poverty-stricken families to offer an education, to get them a slice of mainstream life. Nurtured in the residential campus since age six, the team members were now prepared to announce their arrival. London beckoned, so did recognition and fame.

The training

Behind their collective exuberance was a well-tuned method. Thirty students had been selected from a first list of 56, who underwent rigorous training by a World Rugby Association coach.

The 30 proved their worth at a tournament in Kolkata on July 16, watched closely by their sponsors, the Kolkata Jungle Crows.

The final 12 now await the flight for the big fight on September 24, but not before some fine-tuning by an English coach, Paul Walsh, and two coaches from the Kolkata Rugby Association.

“We are confident of beating the other teams.” This remark by the KISS Rugby team captain to a visiting media team from Bangalore, had a solidity built on months of disciplined training. “From 6 a.m. to 7.30 a.m., 4 p.m. to 6.30 p.m., we are at it every day,” explained the team’s school coach, Manash Jena.

The team

Tag Rugby was the team’s first brush with the game, 18 months ago. Graduating to full rugby in quick time, the team captained by Bikash Chandra Murmu practised hard. Any tribe-based differences forgotten, the students were now part of one team. It had Chitta Ranjan Mumu and Babula Malka, Raj Kishore Murmu and Bukai Hansda, Niranjan Biswal, Hadi Dhangada Majhi, Sahadev Majhi, Gauranga Jamuda, Narsingh Kerai, Barial Beshra and Ganesh Hembram. Represented were the tribes Banda, Santal, Bathudi, Kandha and Kolha, whose people were otherwise dismissed to the poor rural backyard of Orissa.

The vision

Tribal people make up 23.13 per cent of Orissa’s population. It needed a body as systematic as KISS to pull them out of obscurity and neglect.

It was eventually left to philanthropist and Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology (KIIT) founder Achyutananda Samanta to make that critical difference through KISS.

The learning centre he founded in 1993 developed beyond being mere classrooms to include vocational education and livelihood education for the self-sustainability of the programme.

The idea was to give the boys and girls an opportunity to upgrade their skills through exposure within and outside Orissa. The KISS Rugby Team members, who were all part of that 5,000-strong vision, were geared to drive the dream much beyond.

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