Institute of Rural Management - IRM Anand

About Institute of Rural Management - IRM Anand

IRMA was established in 1979 at Anand, Gujarat with the support of the Swiss Agency for Development Cooperation (SDC), the Government of India, the Government of Gujarat, erstwhile Indian Dairy Corporation and the National Dairy Development Board to provide management education, training, research and consultancy support to co-operatives and rural development organisations in India. IRMA is founded with the belief, borne out by Dr.Kurien’s work in the dairy co-operatives which revolutionised the dairy industry in the country, that the key for effective rural development is professional management. Professionalising the management of rural organisations calls for matching the specific but unmet needs of the sector with the formal techniques and skills of management professionals. Linking the two are the ‘rural managers’ prepared by IRMA through its two-years diploma (PRM) in rural management. The Institute's campus is spread over a landscaped sixty-acre site adjacent to the Anand Agricultural University. The campus is fully residential equipped with students' hostels, mess, lecture halls, seminar rooms, library, faculty and administrative offices, auditorium, executive training and development centre, faculty and staff housing, dispensary, and other support facilities. The IRMA staff co-operative store caters to the residents' daily necessities.

Location - IRMA is located in Anand which is situated about 36 kms. north of Vadodara and 65 kms. south of Ahmedabad on the Mumbai-Ahmedabad main rail line and National Highway No. 8 connecting Ahmedabad and Mumbai. The 60-acre campus of IRMA is located between the campuses of the NDDB and Gujarat Agricultural University.  It is connected by rail on the Ahmedabad-Mumbai broad-gauge route

Transportation

• Anand railway station and bus station are opposite to each other and are about 4 kms away, while the National Highway 8 is about 3 km from the campus.

• For reaching IRMA campus, the best mode of transport is an auto-rickshaw. Auto-rickshaws ply without meters and charge Rs.15 during the day and Rs.20 during the night, from the Railway Station and Bus Station. The charges from Chikodra Crossing on the National Highway 8 would be upto Rs.30. Bus service run by the municipal corporation could be used from the railway station to reach either Ganesh Chowkdi or Jagnath Mahadev, which are about a kilometre away from the campus.

Map - https://www.irma.ac.in/institute/howtoreach_irma.php

Faculty

1. Economics.
2. Finance Accounting Costing.
3. General Management - Strategy & Policy.
4. IT & Systems.
5. Marketing.
6. OB-HR.
7. Production Operations Management & QT.
8. Social Sciences.

Facilities

Student Accommodation - The PRM is a fully residential programme. There are nine blocks in the hostel, each with 24 furnished single rooms. Each floor of eight rooms has a furnished common reading room, which is also used for receiving guests of students. The hostel has a boarding facility managed by an elected student body.
 
Library - The Library is housed in a spacious three-storied building. It supports the teaching and research programmes of the Institute. The present collection includes 42628 books, 417 video-cassettes, 40 CD-ROMS, 919 micro-forms, 1742 MTS reports, 108 OTS reports and 309 Fieldwork reports. The Library has subscribed to 453 periodicals including professional journals, newspapers and popular magazines. In addition to this, the library has also subscribed to three electronic databases, namely, Prowess (CMIE, Mumbai), Indiastat.com (Datanet India Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi), and ABI/Inform (Proquest; Informatics, Bangalore). The Library is fully automated and offers services of photocopying, reference, inter-library-loan, and bibliographical search assistance to the users. It is equipped with facilities such as OPAC (Online Public Access Catalogue) and Multimedia.
 
Computer Centre - The Institute through its campus wide network provides connectivity to its resources such as Library information, printing and file access, Internet and Mail Services. Each hostel room in the campus is equipped with network access points that enable the student to have access to all these resources. However, a student is expected to possess a network enabled PC to gain such access.

Network Facilities - The Institute through its campus wide network provides connectivity to its resources such as Library information, printing and file access, Internet and Mail Services. Each hostel room in the campus is equipped with network access points that enable the participant to have access to all these resources. The FPRM participants are also provided with personal computers in their rooms.
 
Recreations and Cultural Life - A wide range of facilities for pursuing recreational and extra-curricular activities are provided through the Student Activity Centre.

These are:

• The Institute has infrastructure facilities for sports such as football, cricket, badminton and table tennis.
• The air-conditioned 400-seat auditorium has excellent audiovisual projection system that is regularly used by the student community and the Institute for holding a variety of programmes.
• The IRMA Staff Club organises various cultural programmes, entertainment and sports activities, and film shows at the Institute. All the PRM students are associate members of the IRMA Staff Club.
• The students organise several cultural programmes, with Jatra, the seven-day festival of students being the grand finale.
• Under the SPIC-MACAY of which many students, staff and faculty are members, several concerts and recitals by eminent artistes are organised every year.
• The students use Terra Firma, their biannual magazine, to share with the alumni and the community the experiences of studying at IRMA.

MDP / Training - IRMA has become a premier centre for research and training in rural management. IRMA distinguishes itself as a management institute with a mandate of working for the development of rural people – a mandate that has crystallized as a mission in the course of twenty-seven years of research and training. Over the years, the core of IRMA’s operating philosophy is the partnership between rural people and committed professional managers. To achieve this objective, IRMA offers, as one of the main activities, Management Development Programmes (MDPs) and training workshops in various management development and sectoral areas ranging in duration from one day to four weeks to prepare in-service managers to face emerging challenges in their careers. For more info - https://www.irma.ac.in/programmes/mdp.php

Some of the MDP / Training Programs:

• Management Appreciation Programme for Voluntary Agencies (VOLAG-MAP) - It is a core programme which covers all functional areas of management and encourages participants to practise cross-functional approach to find solution to problems they face in their workplace.

• ICA - ICA-Japan Regional Training Course on Agricultural Co-operatives. The programme is coordinated by the International Co-operative Alliance (ICA) and funded by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) of the Government of Japan. For more info - https://www.irma.ac.in/programmes/mdp_sponsprog_ica.php

Distress Fund - Several IRMA Alumni work in small voluntary agencies, co-operatives and in remote places and on economic returns that are not really lucrative. Several others might be working on their own or might not have the organisational backing in case of a major health related or catastrophic event happens in their life. The III Batch initiated this fund that could be used to help IRMANS in distress due to whatever reason.

Student Microfinance - The Student Microfinance Initiative is a student-managed, international network dedicated to the promotion of microfinance in various academic institutions around the world. The Initiative aims to make microfinance a sustainable industry in the long term by working on a country-by-country basis. Students from Premier institutions of each country work through Student Committees to improve the prevalent micro finance situation in their regions. They undertake projects to study the situations in their respective regions and carry out projects tailored to the regional needs.

Fellowship/financial assistance - Every participant joining the programme shall receive a fellowship of Rs.10,000/-(gross) per month and a contingency grant of Rs.20,000/-per year. The fellowship and contingency grants are assured for four years; in deserving cases and subject to availability of funds they may be extended for the fifth year.

Doctoral Colloquium - The IRMA Doctoral Colloquium is a fortnightly activity organized around a research theme. The papers to be presented may be sent in advance so that participants are able to engage in an informed discussion. The colloquium is open to scholars who intend to test their research ideas and work in progress. For more info -  https://www.irma.ac.in/programmes/fprm_fellow_stud_doct.php

Placements - The Campus Placement Programme for each graduating batch ensures that all the students secure meaningful and challenging career opportunities in tune with IRMA’s mission. The one-week long campus recruitment programme organised by the Placement Office is held in January-February of the second year of PRM. The nature of jobs offered to IRMA graduates varies widely. The job offers are in areas such as planning and information systems, production management, marketing, finance, accounts, human resource development, rural development, and natural resources management. The Institute seeks to ensure that its graduates are offered competitive remuneration. IRMA has enlisted over 650 organisations, which are designated for the purpose of placement of its graduates.

Research & Publication - The Institute has a publication programme managed by the Committee on Research Publications and Seminars (CORPAS) which facilitates the dissemination of the Institute’s research work. The CORPAS looks after: publications, seminar series and research and consultancy projects. The Committee consists of faculty members and it is headed by a Convenor. IRMA also has added two more series into its overall publication programme namely a quarterly newsletter called Network and a bi-annual journal called International Journal of Rural Management. For more info -  https://www.irma.ac.in/researchandpublication/r_p.php

IJRM - The overarching purpose of the Journal is to create a community of scholars in the field of Rural Management. It does so by acting as a vehicle that promotes scholarship and disseminates knowledge. Anything rural is of interest; however, the Journal has an avowed bias towards matters of policy, institutions, organizations and practices. The journal publishes conceptual, empirical and review papers in the form of research articles, reports of research in progress, analyses of current and topical practice, policy issues relating to rural management, and book reviews. IJRM is a refereed journal. It practices double-blind reviews. The Journal is an initiative of the Institute of Rural Management (IRMA), and is published by Sage India   http://www.sagepub.in. The Journal could be accessed on the web at - http://www.sagepub.in/browse/journal.asp?Journalid=47&Subject_Name=&SubSubjectName=&mode=1

Alumni - IRMA has a strong alumni group of over 1400 members and continues to grow as batches graduate every year. The Alumni Association maintains its own homepage on the net and has various chapters all around the country and in some other parts of the world. For more info - https://www.irma.ac.in/alumni/alumni.php

Conferences and Symposia - In order to pursue its mission, the Institute strives for creating knowledge base and disseminates it in appropriate forum. In an attempt to meet the requirements, various contemporary issues are identified and deliberated through symposia and conferences organized in the Institute. For more info - https://www.irma.ac.in/institute/conf_symp.php

IRMA Societies

Some of them are :

1. National Cooperative Development Corporation, New Delhi.
2. Mother Dairy Calcutta.
3. Tamil nadu Cooperative Milk Producers' Federation Ltd., Chennai.

For more info - https://www.irma.ac.in/institute/irmasociety.php