Odia poet and essayist Dr Ashutosh Parida received the 47th Sarala Puraskar at a ceremony in Bhubaneswar on Sunday, October 25, 2026. The award, one of Odisha’s most prominent literary honours, recognised his poetry collection Bishwas De Pruthwi. Tamil lyricist, poet and novelist R. Vairamuthu presented the prize, and Jnanpith laureate Pratibha Ray inaugurated the event, OdishaBytes reported.
What happened
The Sarala Puraskar is given each year by the Indian Metals Public Charitable Trust (IMPaCT), the charitable arm of Indian Metals & Ferro Alloys Ltd (IMFA), for outstanding literary work in Odia. The prize carries Rs 7 lakh, a copper plaque and a citation. Parida’s selection was first announced on August 19, 2026, when Deccan Chronicle reported that his book had been picked from a shortlist of seven titles.
IMPaCT trustee Paramita Panda presided over the ceremony. She described the winning collection as a reflection on the present era and said Parida places social reality at the centre of his writing, according to Deccan Chronicle. Parida, a former scientist at the CSIR’s Institute of Minerals and Materials Technology (CSIR-IMMT) in Bhubaneswar, spoke about how science and poetry both depend on curiosity and imagination. He called poetry “a journey into human memory”.
In his keynote, Vairamuthu talked about language and identity. He said that “one’s mother tongue is one’s identity” and urged audiences to protect their languages. He added that “language is a culture, and it lives in continuity with other cultures.”
The trust also gave its Ila-Bansidhar Panda Kala Samman for lifetime contribution to the arts at the same event. Odissi guru Durga Charan Ranbir, a 2025 Padma Shri recipient, was honoured for the performing arts, and sculptor and art educator Damodar Behera for the visual arts. Each award carries Rs 2.5 lakh, a copper plaque and a citation.
Key facts
- Award: 47th Sarala Puraskar, for literary achievement in Odia
- Winner: Dr Ashutosh Parida, poet, essayist and former CSIR-IMMT scientist
- Winning work: Bishwas De Pruthwi (poetry)
- Ceremony: Bhubaneswar, October 25, 2026; award presented by R. Vairamuthu
- Prize: Rs 7 lakh, a copper plaque and a citation
- Other shortlisted authors (per Deccan Chronicle): Aparna Mohanty, Padmaja Pal, Archana Nayak, Bijay Nayak, Prakash Mahapatra and Ramesh Prasad Panigrahi
- Kala Samman 2026: Guru Durga Charan Ranbir (Odissi) and Damodar Behera (sculpture)
Background
The prize is named after Sarala Das, the 15th-century poet whose Odia retelling of the Mahabharata is regarded as a founding text of Odia literature. IMPaCT was set up in 1980 by Ila Panda and Bansidhar Panda, OrissaPOST notes. Besides the literary prize, the trust runs the Ekalabya Puraskar, which it created in 1993 and which has become one of Odisha’s best-known sports honours.
Corporate-endowed regional awards like this fill a space that national institutions cannot cover alone. The Sahitya Akademi honours writing in 24 languages, but a prize dedicated to one language, with a cash purse comparable to many national awards, gives Odia writers sustained attention at home. The choice of a Tamil poet as chief guest, and of a Jnanpith-winning Odia novelist to open the event, also linked a language-specific prize to wider conversations in Indian literature.
Perspective: why it matters
Three points stand out. The first is genre. A poetry collection winning a major regional prize is a reminder that verse still carries cultural weight in Indian languages, even as publishing economics increasingly favour fiction and non-fiction in English.
The second is the winner’s background. Parida’s career as a materials scientist runs against the familiar idea that literature and science are separate worlds. His remarks at the ceremony suggested he sees the two as connected ways of asking questions, a view that could resonate with readers trained in technical fields who still read and write in their mother tongue.
The third is the theme the speakers kept returning to: language survival. Vairamuthu’s comments on mother tongues come at a time when debates over the medium of instruction, three-language policy and the dominance of English in higher education and the job market are live across India. Prizes cannot reverse those pressures on their own. What they can do is put money and visibility behind writers who keep working in Odia, Tamil and other Indian languages, and that helps sustain the readerships those languages depend on.
