Irma plans to set up three new campuses

To introduce more courses next year

The Institute of Rural Management-Anand (Irma), which is in the midst of power struggle among board members, has decided to set up three new campuses across the country in an attempt to make quality rural management education accessible to more aspiring management students.

The institute, which had introduced a module on commodity trading in its post-graduate programme syllabus three years back, now has decided to introduce few more new courses next year, including a course on risk management in agriculture.

"We understand that one Irma is inadequate for the country, keeping in mind the requirements of huge number of educated managers for rural India and emerging sectors. So we have decided to open three new institutes in north, east and south. While we are yet to finalise the locations, we have decided to open an institute in Orissa, Lucknow or Kanpur, and Andhra Pradesh," Verghese Kurien, chairman of Irma, told Business Standard.

The new campuses would be made operational in three years, Kurien said, "Funds would not be a constraint as the state governments concerned also would be happy to house the institute in their states."

Kurien, who is facing opposition from certain quarters for 'illegally' holding the post of chairman for the last 17 years, said that he would not step down on 'demand from a section of people.'

The newly appointed acting-director of Irma, L K Vaswani, who has taken over from K Prathap Reddy, whose termination case is still being heard in the Gujarat High Court, said, "We are planning to introduce few more courses shortly. Given the rising demand for more managers in specialised sectors, we are working a course in risk management in agriculture. With more and more students showing interest in joining rural management courses as last year we received 8,000 applications against 6,000-odd applications two years back for 100 PGP seats, we also may increase number of seats in PGP in two to three years."

Vaswani also said that more and more insurance companies have been showing interest in hiring Irma graduates.

"Our graduates were this year hired by ICICI Lombard, HDFC General Insurance as the companies are working overtime to take their products to rural India. Even banks have started showing keen interest in hiring Irma graduates with UTI Bank and Indian Bank taking part in this year's placement process. We expect State Bank of India to join the bandwagon from next year as we have already got a nod from the bank," he said.

Vaswani, saying that Kurien was 'right' in terminating Reddy, said, "It was a decision taken by the chairman and following complaints also from faculty members." He, however, did not divulge details of the complaints, while Reddy too denied to comment on the issue.