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30TH CONVOCATION HELD ON 26TH APRIL 2011

IRMA's Convocation for 2011 was held on April 26th 2011. 102 participants of the Post-Graduate Diploma in Rural Management and one participant of the Fellow Programme received their degrees during an elegant ceremony in which the Hon'ble Vice-President of India, Shri M. Hamid Ansari, was the Chief Guest. Network brings experts from the key speeches of the day.

In his address Shri Hamid Ansari reflected about the level of economic growth and human development at the time of establishment of IRMA in 1979, and how India’s prospects have changed since then. He expressed concerns about despite of larger central government expenditure in contemporary times (around Rupees Ninety Five Thousand crores in 1989-90 to around Rupees Ten Lakh crores in 2009-10), “outcomes are not yet commensurate with outlays”. Shri. Ansari pointed out the relevance of the rural management education in such a context. He posed very critical questions towards IRMA community for self-reflection:

“Should rural management education have a value focus towards the poor and marginalized sections of our society and empathize with the problems of rural India or should such education be value neutral as in the case of conventional management education? In short, do we need a committed academia to deal with rural management?

The winds of global change have percolated to the rural and village level. Global developments on economic, agricultural and trade issues have a profound impact on the lives and fortunes of rural citizens. To what extent has rural management education kept pace with the changing global and regional context?

What is the role and extent of influence of the placement market on the curriculum of the institutions, the type of students it attracts, and the type of careers and professions they choose to pursue after they graduate?

How is the interface between public administration, politics and rural economy functioning? What is the role of professional rural managers in the planning, implementation and monitoring of outcomes of the government’s budgets on rural development, poverty alleviation and rural employment?”

Shri. Ansari said that rural managers trained with value orientation and commitment has many critical issues to be handled in the country. He said even in the milk sector, though India’s achievements are commendable, there is much tasks left. “Our per capita availability of milk is still lower than the world average of 279.4 grams. We have been unable to keep pace with the growing domestic demand for milk at about six million tonnes per year whereas annual incremental production over the last ten years has been about 3.5 million tonnes per year. Moreover, 80 per cent of milk produced is still handled in the unorganized sector and only the remaining 20 per cent is equally shared by cooperatives and private dairies.

Rural Managers have an important role in expanding the footprint of the organized sector, modernizing marketing systems, improving access to formal credit mechanisms and working to improve transport, veterinary and dairy infrastructure. They will have to work alongside the government in ensuring that there is a strong supply side response to the enhanced demand so that the gap is met through domestic supply rather than imports, with all the inclusive growth benefits accruing to rural citizens. Other elements such as low productivity of animals, breeding programmes, feed and fodder, and research should also be addressed”.

Shri. Ansari encouraged the young graduating minds to concentrate on nation building: “Rural managers are one important component of professionals, alongside the civil service and the Gram Panchayat officials, who will increasingly have to work through cooperative partnerships to achieve our developmental vision for rural India. Like the civil service, I believe that rural managers must be committed to our constitutional ideals to achieve inclusive development, social justice, equality and the opportunity for the full development of capacities of all our citizens. At the same time, in an era of increasing economic globalization, decisions taken in global and regional fora have important consequences for the rural sector. Rural management curriculum should keep pace with these changes and rural managers should analyse and watch out for emerging threats and opportunities flowing from these developments.”

Towards closing his oration, Shri. Ansari also reminded the founding objective of education: “The principle objective of an educational institution is to provide education and not to become a de facto placement organization. While everyone realizes that students take education loans to cover the high fees of management institutions, and that a good career is a legitimate expectation of every student, the job market cannot and should not be the sole guiding light.”

IRMA Chairman Yoginder K. Alagh in his address pointed out some of the puzzles in policy making in India. He invoked passing student to make creative interventionists to be of help to the farmers in the times of high economic growth in the country: “When you grow at seven percent in per capita terms you need a lot of agricultural and rural products and services. The farmer will provide them and he and she for in many cases the farmer is a lady, will move to markets to sell. Will we develop the market towns, the roads, the communication links, the skills, the health facilities, the financial products and a lot else with which the farmer will do this or will we leave him (her) to the capricious mercies of the market, a great hand maiden but a cruel master if the lessons of economic history and our own freedom movement are to be believed”.

Vivek Bhandari, the director of IRMA, in his speech thanked IRMA for the lessons of institution building: “As you know, I was privileged to join IRMA some years ago at a critical juncture in the institute’s evolution. After four incredibly eventful years, I am now moving on… My time here has been transformative and challenging in wonderful ways—and for this, I shall always remain thankful to you all.” He also encouraged the outgoing students to passionately transform the future of the organizations in which they were going to be part of: “What makes organizations dynamic, pulsating dynamos of change is essentially their humanistic core—the capacity of rational individuals to fearlessly breathe fire into any activity through their own passion and creativity. The best “rules-based systems,” ultimately, are built on such capacities”.