Finance Committee

Deepak Kumar Behera hails from Sambalpur district in Odisha and is an internationally acclaimed anthropologist. Presently, he is serving as the Vice Chancellor of Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS) Deemed to be University. Prior to joining KISS-DU, he served as the Vice-Chancellor of Sambalpur University, Berhampur University and Rajendra University, Bolangir. Under the leadership of Professor Behera, Berhampur University secured “A” grade by NAAC (the first state-funded university in Odisha to achieve this distinction). Professor Behera has the distinction of being the only academician from Odisha to become the Vice Chancellor of four different universities.

Professor Behera has many national and international distinctions to his credit. He had been a Fulbright Visiting Professor at California State University, Long Beach, where he taught a course titled, “Childhood in a Changing Context (With Special Reference to South Asia)”. As a recipient of DAAD fellowship, he had been a Visiting Guest Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Karl Ebrard University, Germany. The other prestigious fellowships received by him include: the Carlos Chaga Foundation Fellowship, Brazil; National Research Foundation Fellowship, Republic of South Africa; German Research Council Fellowship, Germany; Indo-French Academic Exchange Fellowship, India/France; Indo-Israel Academic and Cultural Exchange Fellowship, India/Israel.

He has also been a visiting professor in Aarhus University, Denmark; University of Free State and University of Durban-Westville, South Africa; Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Maison des Sciences de L"Homme, Paris and CNRS-EHESS, France. He has also delivered invited lectures at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel; Tel Aviv University, Israel; University of Orange Free State, South Africa; University of Durban West-Ville, South Africa; University of California at Santa Cruz; University of Illinois at Chicago; University of Utah, Logan (famous Brownbag Lecture); University of Arizona, Tucson, USA. Professor Behera also delivered the prestigious Jubilee lecture (Anthropology Section) in the 100th Science Congress held at Calcutta University in January 2013.

Professor Behera has also been a recipient of the prestigious Sarat Chandra Roy Memorial Gold Medal by the Asiatic Society, Kolkata (the oldest educational institution in Asia) for his outstanding contribution in the field of cultural anthropology in India.

He has to his credit more than 120 research publications in reputed journals and edited volumes. He is the author/editor of 22 volumes.  His publications have appeared in reputed publishing companies such as Routledge, Springer, Anthem, Elsevier, Pearson, Orient Longman, Kluwer International, Trans-National, Manges, Greenwood Press, Concept, etc. He was the editor of the Journal

Dr. Prashanta Kumar Routray has been serving as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS), since April 2005. For the last five years, he has been holding charge as the Registrar of KISS Deemed to be University. KISS is the largest Integrated Residential Academic Institution for the indigenous communities. Thirty thousand tribal students, from kindergarten to the university level, receive free education, healthcare, vocational and athletic training at KISS. There are ten thousand more in ten satellite centres across Odisha.
In a thirty-eight-year-long working career, Dr. Routray has served three institutions in various capacities. He began his professional career at the Advanced Study Centre in Psychology at Utkal University, where he completed his Ph.D. in 1992. He joined the Centre for Youth and Social Development, (CYSD) a Bhubaneswar-based NGO specializing in capacity building, research, and advocacy for the tribal, rural, and urban poor in Odisha, in 1992. By 1994, he shifted from research to practice, taking over as a Programme Officer and Trainer. He rose fast and was heading the Panchayati Raj division at CYSD in 1996. Routray was promoted again in 1998 to the rank of a Programme Manager, leading entire divisions and major projects, coordinating with state and union governments and hundreds of professionals and volunteers on the ground. As a Program Officer, he was with LEPRA India, a NGO which works for mainstream rehabilitation of patients of Leprosy and other debilitating diseases, for a year between 2004 and 2005.
Routray specializes in academic and vocational training of students and the youth. He is the topper in the Utkal University, Bhubaneswar. As a practitioner of Organizational Psychology and Management, he has excelled in large-scale education delivery, strategic organizational planning and turnkey project management, training of trainers, and information and communication management.
Several national and international courses and workshops on these have subsequently strengthened his domain expertise. In 1998, for instance, he was in the Netherlands, attending a UNESCO certified training course on early child development at the AVERROES European Training Centre, Amsterdam.
At KISS, Dr. Routray is responsible for the overall institutional growth and development for both academic and non-academic activities. It primarily involves presiding over a contingent of over two thousand teaching and support staff and coordinating with various donor and collaborators such as the state and the union governments, UNESCO, UNFPA, UNICEF, UNESCO, The US Embassy, ORACLE Education Foundation, TISS, Give

Mr Easwar is a Chartered Accountant with over 42 years of experience in both the public and private sectors.