Varghese Kurien, chairman of the Institute of Rural Management, Anand, (IRMA) said the government could not encroach upon the autonomy of the institute as long as he was the chairman there. "IRMA has done a reasonably good job so far in fulfilling its mission mainly due to the financial and administrative autonomy that it has enjoyed for the past 25 years or so and I hope governments at the Centre and the state continue to allow IRMA to enjoy this autonomy," Kurien said, while addressing the 23rd annual convocation of the institute.
Kurien also confirmed the institute's plan to hike the fees for its two-year Post-Graduate Programme in Rural Management (PRM) to Rs 2.2 lakh from the existing Rs 1.45 lakh. The new fee structure will be implemented from the 2005-2007 academic session.
Incidentally, IRMA has not been receiving any funds from the central government since 1996. Until 1996, the institute received its funds from the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB), a central government body, but had not received any funds since.
At present, the institute meets its own expenses "" through consultancy fees, management development programmes (MDPs) and its own corpus funds.
NDDB provided the institute with a corpus of Rs 9 crore in 1987 and Rs 10 crore in 1996, subject to the condition that the institute can only use the interest accrued on it.
