Anand, April 16: They might not get the lucrative offers and hefty pay cheques their IIT and IIM counterparts do, but that doesn’t take away from the importance of being IRMA passouts.

The 25th annual convocation ceremony of Institute of Rural Management, Anand, the country’s lone rural management institute was held on Sunday. The 89 students who passed out were thrilled with what R A Mashelkar, CSIR director-general, had to say in his convocation address: ‘‘India needs IRMAs more than its IITs and IIMs now.’’

Mashelkar said that after green revolution and white revolution, the country needs ‘‘connectivity revolution’’. Pointing to important revolutions taking place in rural India, he called upon the need to have more IRMAs, at least one each in Uttaranchal, the North-East and Orissa to harness creativity and innovation at the grassroots. He called upon IRMA graduates to be not only managers, but also to emerge as development and social entrepreneurs.

Citing the case of the National Innovation Foundation (NIF) which had mobilised 50,000 innovative and traditional knowledge practices, he regretted that few had become the basis of socio-economic enterprises. He called for new enterprises which could be set up by IRMA graduates with NIF investing capital.

Addressing the spotless white kurta-churidar clad graduates in their kolhapuris, Mashelkar was all praise for IRMA chairman V Kurien’s role and for IRMA, which he termed as the nation’s pride. ‘‘I strongly believe the legacy of Dr Kurien has never been more relevant than today when the influence of globalisation is squeezing the space for local and community action,’’ said Mashelkar.

IRMA’s new challenge, he said, is to expand its vision to other sectors of Indian economy which need outstanding managers imbued with social and communitarian spirit and can transform rural India.

IRMA may increase PG programme seats
IRMA acting director L K Vaswani on Sunday said the institute is likely to increase its student intake capacity to about 120 students for the two-year post-graduate programme in rural management. ‘‘We are likely to increase our (student) intake capacity to nearly 120 students,” Vaswani said. ‘‘We have already obtained AICTE approval in this regard,’’ he added. Currently there are about 90 seats for the rural management programme at the institute.

I have no regrets in life, says Kurien
VERGHESE Kurien, IRMA chairman, addressing the students, said he had “no regrets in life”. The father of India’s dairy movement and former chairman of Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation said, “Looking back, I do not have to regret anything. It has been an exciting, rewarding and eventful experience.” Kurien said, ‘‘In the name of liberalisation and globalisation, I wonder if we are not giving up, one by one, all that we fought for in our struggle for freedom under a policy framework of self-esteem. I ask myself if we are inviting a new form of colonialism.’’ Kurien further sounded a warning note to the graduates saying they are entering a world which is harsh and perhaps even hostile.