The Hindu Business Line : IIM-Lucknow to train senior agriculture scientists

Thiruvananthapuram, Sept 17 The Centre for Food and Agribusiness Management (CFAM) at the Indian Institute of Management-Lucknow (IIM-L) has launched a management development programme for senior scientists of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR).

The CFAM will spearhead 21 such programmes on leadership, public-private partnerships (PPP), policy monitoring and evaluations over the next four years in a ‘consortium’ mode, the Chairman, Prof Sushil Kumar, told Business Line.

The IIM-L organised a five-day ‘Management development programme on leadership for innovations in agriculture’ from September 1 as part of the initiative. A batch of 12 directors and senior scientists of the ICAR attended.

Inaugurated by Dr Panjab Singh, renowned agriculture specialist, the programme sought to instil requisite leadership and managerial skills among participants so they could work in an inter-disciplinary team and foster innovative partnerships for complementary interventions.

Emphasis shifting

Giving a background, Prof Kumar said that the country’s agriculture sector is witnessing an unprecedented paradigmatic shift. The emphasis is shifting from producer-driven to market-led agricultural development.

The National Agricultural Research System (NARS) needs to respond to the twin challenges of facilitating this transition and ensuring sustainability of livelihoods, particularly of the rural poor in the disadvantaged regions.

The ICAR is implementing the national agricultural innovation project (NAIP) with the explicit objective to give NARS an innovation perspective by transforming it to a pluralistic national agricultural innovation system (NAIS).

Management programme

Here, public, private and civil society organisations are expected to be involved together in well-defined partnerships to pilot accelerated and sustainable transformations of agriculture to meet the national goals.

Agricultural research management, in addition to technical skills and capabilities, involves various other facets of general management also.

Senior agriculture administrators need not only be good researchers but should also possess good leadership and managerial skills.

This is duly recognised and emphasised in the NAIP. Most NAIP research projects are to be carried out in a consortia mode which essentially means working in teams in cross-cultural and complex environment.

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