The Hindu Business Line : Needed, many more IRMAs

THE Union Ministry of Human Resource Development is understood to have recently lectured the dons of the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) — Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Calcutta — on the advisability of their helping the government set up one new IIM each. A mother-daughter relation has been suggested between these IIMs and their progeny, arguably to ensure that an equitable distribution of the power and glory quotient of the three IIMs.

One does not know at this juncture what precisely the ABC institutes are planning as follow-up action in this context. If it were to happen, it surely would not be the first instance of such mother-daughter spin offs.

The first instance of such a mother-daughter relation came to the fore when the Institute of Rural Management, Anand (IRMA) was born in 1979 as a result of such an initiative by IIM Ahmedabad. It was such an effort in the 1970s by the late Prof Ravi Mathai, that led to the formation of IRMA, recalls Dr Verghese Kurien.

The seeds of IRMA were sown following Dr Kurien's decision to quit the IIM-A governing board, after a brief stint, apparently following some insensitive remarks made by another board member about managing cattle. Soon enough, Dr Kurien set the ball rolling and the IRMA was in the making.

Some 20 years down the line, when IRMA proposed the setting up of three more IRMA-type business schools in the east, south and north of India, the idea did not find any takers in the establishment. The project for the three IRMA clones, coming way before the HRD Ministry found the wisdom in seeking IIMs to spawn, stood grounded.

The one reason for the project not taking off was that the cost of putting up an IRMA clone at Rs 50 crore, including a Rs 20-crore corpus for the first few years of operation. In 1998 that IRMA got in touch with the Orissa government following the latter's offer for 50 acre near the Konarak temple complex for setting up a satellite institute. It was to be a Rs 32-crore project, but the fight for turf space led to a situation where no university affiliation was forthcoming for the proposed institute. The natural corollary was that the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) denied it sanction and soon enough, the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB), the proposed promoter, too backed out.

Now, there is less than a year to go before the Orissa government's free land offer expires and this property has been reallocated for some other project. The Anand-based institute is fast running out of ideas in its search for a promoter and is said to be even considering tapping such sources as the Ford Foundation and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), among IRMA's original promoters.

Prof K. Pratap Reddy, Director, IRMA, bemoans that against some 900 business schools in India supporting the corporate sector, there is just one IRMA working exclusively for rural management. There are exceptions in the few agri-business programmes at agriculture universities and some IIMs, he admits.

"The present government has earmarked rural India and agriculture as key drivers in its economic growth plan. If that were to happen, one needs to consider afresh the proposal for setting up at least three IRMA clones, if not more," says Prof Reddy. According to him, some factors that can no longer be ignored are:

Absence of institutions offering quality education for rural management;

Scaling up of NGOs that are facing the problem of lack of trained manpower;

Perception that cooperatives and people's movements are not crucial to development;

Duplication of development intervention, where efforts initiated by NGOs have not yielded the desired impact on the lives of people;

Perceived need of development partners (donor agencies);

Need for building cooperative movements such as dairy cooperatives;

Rise of grassroots democracy, providing greater political and economic power to people;

Increased role of the corporate sector in social development;

Management of natural resources for optimum use leading to sustainable development; and

Advocacy of pro-poor policies and programmes.

The late 1990s saw a rising demand for setting up of IRMA clones in a number of States. Leaders of at least three States had got in touch with Dr Kurien to help set up similar institutes. If it was Bihar's Ms Rabri Devi who set the ball rolling in 1998, joining in were Mr M. Karunanidhi and Mr Chandrababu Naidu a year later from Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh respectively.

There were similar demands from the State dairy federations of Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Karnataka between 1999 and 2001. The last such request came from the Chief Secretary of Tripura in 2003. However, with the souring of the Orissa experiment, IRMA has decided to sit tight till the Centre gets involved in this rural initiative.

"It was more of a cousinly relationship rather than a mother-daughter relationship that existed between IIM-A and IRMA. Literally so as Ravi Mathai was my cousin and it was perhaps to keep me in good humour that he heeded to my request for setting up IRMA. But, then, we had the Indian Dairy Corporation, the NDDB, CIDA and the Ford Foundation to fund the project while the IIM-A provided the soul of the institute. Now, IRMA has been ready for a number of years to dispense with the soul factor, but there has been a dearth of those who could build the body of this institute," points out Dr Kurien.Would, then, IRMA need to turn to countries such as Canada if New Delhi continues to turn a blind eye to the compulsions in rural management education. Surely, there cannot be any question as to the primacy of corporate vis-a-vis agri-business management.

For those still harbouring any doubts on this count, a quick peek into the contents of the UPA Government's Common Minimum Programme will settle issues once and for all.

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