The wheels of the White Revolution were set rolling in the then sleepy town of Anand in the early 1960s. They gave birth to the cooperative structure, which formed the bedrock of many development initiatives in India. When Dr. Verghese Kurien was looking for managers to realize his vision of Operation Flood, he found that the educational scenario at the time did not cater to this specific need. Having already set up more than 30 institutions including GCMMF, AMUL, and NDDB, he devoted his institution-building skills to develop an institute that would train managers who, apart from possessing required managerial skills, would have an additional advantage in terms of a grasp of the dynamics of rural India. Thus, the Institute of Rural Management Anand (IRMA) was set up in 1979 with a mandate to professionalize management of rural producers’ organizations while creating a dynamic body of knowledge.
About IRMA
The institute was established with the support of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), the Government of India, the erstwhile Indian Dairy Corporation, the National Dairy Development Board, and the Government of Gujarat. The founding mandate was to provide management education, training, research and consultancy support to cooperatives and other organizations working for rural development in India. The core of IRMA’s operating philosophy has been to build and sustain a partnership between rural people and committed professional managers, as is reflected in its mission statement, “to promote sustainable, ecologically-friendly and equitable socio-economic development of rural people through professional management.”
IRMA’s vision is to make continuous and significant contributions to the transformation of rural India through:
- Leadership in cutting-edge knowledge creation,
- Innovations in education
- Pursuance of the ethical imperative of sustainability, and
- Policy oriented research
For more than four decades, IRMA has been committed to excellence in scholarship, research, and training. A variety of rural organizations – cooperatives/producers’ organizations, non-government and government development organizations, and social enterprises, besides others engaged with the rural space in the context of enhancing its prosperity, have approached IRMA for problem-solving techniques and consultation. The graduates of IRMA have gone on to become nation-builders and thought leaders in the fields of public management, cooperatives, development, politics and more. In today’s world, when the opportunities in rural areas are brimming over, IRMA’s graduates have left no stone unturned in successfully establishing rural linkages for organizations from different sectors. This has, in turn, strengthened IRMA’s position as the pioneering institute of rural management in the country and a reputed institution of knowledge throughout the world.