L.K. Mahapatra put Odisha on the global map of anthropological studies

Back in 1998, when I was able to fend off my family and cross over to the arts stream for my graduation, I had two options — psychology and sociology. While my batch at BJB College started with a few empty seats in the anthropology department, a few kilometres away, a professor from the same university had turned Odisha into a hub of anthropological studies, not just in India but globally. Three decades later, the department is one of the two Centres for Advanced Study in Anthropology in the country, the highest rank given by the UGC. In fact, that’s how the Oxford anthropologist Robert Parkin described him — ‘an institution builder.’ Early inspiration Born in Balasore in 1929, Prof. Mahapatra grew up in a small village, in the household of a court clerk, and had to find funds for most of his education himself. Did he know that more than two decades later, the Indian government would be talking along similar lines in search of a bridge to Southeast Asia?