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Anand Institute of Rural Management (IRMA), the premier rural management institute founded by Dr. Verghese Kurien, has set two records for its flagship Post Graduate Diploma in Management (Rural Management) 2022-2024 with highest number of enrollments from aspirational areas and candidates from outside Gujarat.
In the 2022 batch of a total of 271 students, 12 per cent are from aspirational areas and 97 per cent are from outside Gujarat, data accessed and analyzed by The Indian Express revealed.
Among the reasons cited for these firsts, institute authorities said the 5 percent weightage given to candidates from aspirational fields and the entire online admission process helped achieve these numbers.
“This year we have the largest number of students from aspirational districts, a significant improvement in representation from aspirational districts as they come back and work for their respective districts, states or areas. With this idea, we have introduced 5 per cent weightage for candidates from aspirational areas for this batch,” IRMA Director Dr Umakant Dash told The Indian Express.
According to the recent Delta Ranking by NITI Aayog based on incremental progress achieved in 49 Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) under five broad socio-economic themes – health and nutrition, education, agriculture and water resources, financial inclusion and skill development and infrastructure – there are 112 ambitious areas in the country.
Launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in January 2018, the Ambitious Districts Program (ADP) aims to rapidly and effectively transform 112 least developed districts across the country.
The broad contours of the program are convergence (of central and state schemes), cooperation (of central, state nodal officers and district collectors) and inter-district competition through monthly delta ranking; all driven by a mass movement.
With the flagship program in rural management, students, after passing out, are encouraged to contribute to the rural development sector. However, the trend over the years reveals that managers are attracted to lucrative corporate sectors.
In this regard, the principal added, “Instead of forcing the students, after passing out, to serve in rural areas instead of corporate organizations, we have tried to motivate students from these (underdeveloped) areas on admission.”
The decision for IRMA, an autonomous institute, according to authorities, was an “inside call”.
“This is not imposed or dictated by anyone. The call was from within to serve vulnerable areas that lag behind developed areas in several indicators. This is part of building capacity for them,” added Dr Dash.
Out of 271 students, 262 or 97 percent are from states other than Gujarat. The largest representation of six regions is from North Indian states-73, followed by South Indian states-72.
In the 2022 batch, the states that sent the maximum number of students to IRMA are Maharashtra (33), Uttar Pradesh (30), Kerala (24), Bihar (20), Haryana and Madhya Pradesh (17 each), Telangana (14) ), Uttarakhand and Andhra Pradesh (13 each) and Tamil Nadu (12). This is the second batch appearing for the online admission process. With the introduction of online admission process due to the Covid-19 pandemic, which replaced the personal interviews that used to be held at Anand, this time it was conducted online.
Among the reasons for this surge, IRMA authorities attribute the online admission process. Learning from the first online admission process, which was also affected by the pandemic, this time IRMA disseminated information well in advance.
Also, with active social media awareness, more applicants appeared for the interview process compared to last year, officials said.
From the coming academic sessions, the institute plans to set up around seven centers in each region across the country.
Since other management institutes also conduct interviews around the same time, candidates prefer not to risk their chances of securing a seat. Also, traveling to Anand from across the country is not only time consuming but also a financial burden on them.
However, the dominance of students from agriculture and allied disciplines continued in the new group with 42 percent, followed by 26 percent engineering students.
PGDM (RM) is recognized as equivalent to Masters in Rural Management by the Association of Indian Universities (AIU) and approved by the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and has produced some of the most influential leaders in various sectors.
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