Daybreak - IRMA's successful rural MBA is undergoing an uneasy makeover at Delhi’s desk

Episode Date: September 21, 2025

IRMA was never just another B-school. Born out of Verghese Kurien’s (the father of Operation Flood movement) mind, it built a one-of-a-kind management program for rural India—training managers for cooperatives, NGOs, and grassroots institutions, far away from the IIM playbook.Now, Delhi has other plans. An Act of Parliament is folding IRMA into a vast new central university, the "Tribhuvan" Sahkari University, with hundreds of affiliates. On paper, it’s about scaling cooperative education nationwide. But the shift is sparking anxiety over placements, faculty, and whether Kurien’s vision will survive in a system built for size.Tune in.Compete in India's first and only case competition.Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

Hi, this is Rohan Dharma Kumar. If you've heard any of the Ken's podcasts, you've probably heard me, my interruptions, my analogies, and my contrarian takes on most topics. And you might rightly be wondering why am I interrupting this episode too. It's for a special announcement. For the last few months, I and Sita Raman Ganesh, my colleague and the Ken's deputy editor, have been working on an ambitious new podcast. It's called Intermission.

We want to tell the secret sauce stories of India's greatest companies. Stories of how they were born, how they fought to survive, how they build their organizations and culture, how they manage to innovate and thrive over decades, and most importantly, how they're poised today. To do that, Sita and I have been reading books, poring over reports, going through financial statements, digging up archives, and talking to dozens of people. And if that wasn't enough, we also decided to throw in video into the mix. Yes, you heard that right. Intermission has also had to find its footing in the world of multi-camera shoots in professional studios, laborious editing, and extensive post-production.

Sita and I are still reeling from the intensity of our first studio recording. Intermission launches on March 23rd. To get alert, as soon as we release our first studio recording, episode, please follow intermission on Spotify and Apple Podcast or subscribe to the Ken's YouTube channel. You can find all of the links at the ken.com slash I am. With that, back to your episode. In July in Gujarat's Anand, Amit Shah, India's Minister of Cooperation, laid the foundation stone for the Thribuwan Sahagari University. Technically speaking, it was not a new place. This was the familiar campus of the Institute of Rural Management or IRMA. But the sign board had changed,

and with it, the institution itself. The thing is, IRMA isn't just any other management school. It was founded by Virgis-Kurion, the architect of Operation Flood, the world's largest dairy development program which made India a global leader in dairy production. And he founded IRMA to train managers for rural India. For decades, it was a boutique school with its own cultivated niche, not IIM style consultants or bankers, but cooperative managers, NGO leaders and dairy union professionals. Now, by an act of parliament, that boutique has been absorbed into a sprawling new university. On paper, IRMA retains its name and autonomy, but in reality, it is being reborn, or depending on the point of view, erased. And the consequences are many. For students, placement

seasons will now be shared with multiple colleges. Alumnies are discerpts. Alumnies are dissoned. grunted seeing Korean's legacy being rebranded, and professors face more schools, more students, but not the extra staff needed to support them. The government has already sanctioned three new colleges on IRME's 60-acre campus. This is with a 500-crow-rupeed seed fund and plans to affiliate some 300 small and medium institutions nationwide. That's an unusually high number for a single university to manage. But the plan, as IRME's then-director, Omacanth Dasch explained, was to create a national cooperative education system with IRMA at its centre. Now, as Fankaj Balab, an alumnus, told the Ken reporter Indarpal Singh,

IRMA could have stayed a Rural Management Institute with cooperative being one among its many offerings. But you see, that's not the vision anymore. Instead, as a current IRMA professor said, the shift from rural to cooperative isn't really a shift at all. The rural aspect will always be there, but the cooperative focus broadens rural management into something that touches the lives of millions. The thing is, IRMA was carving its own path, and it was the best at what it was doing. In fact, a student who spoke with Indarpal turned on IAMs to be part of this world. She said that she didn't regret her decision at all, and the placement numbers show us why.

In 2024, the dairy industry was actually the second largest recruiter of IRMA graduates, right after banking and financial services. So clearly, the model worked. And it still does. But by mandate, that model is now being rewritten. Welcome to Daybreak, a business podcast from the Ken. I'm your host Rachel Burghese, and every day of the week, my co-host, Nika Sharma and I

will bring you one new story that is worth understanding and worth your time. Today is Monday, the 22nd of September. The act that set up Thribhuvan Sahakari University shifts everything IRME owns into the new university. While it remains an independent institute, it will now sit inside a bigger frame. That's the twist of the legislation. It assures continuity, all while pulling IRMA into something flatter and more centrally run. But before the government rewrote its statute, IRME had written its own story.

A school built to train rural managers had elbowed its way into the mainstream MBA rankings. In the 2024 NIRF or National Institutional Ranking Framework list, it placed 49. ahead of a few IIMs. Which is ironic because IRMA was never supposed to compete with IIMs. It was meant to be the other track. And that track was a very particular niche. When Korean founded IRMA in 1979, three quarters of India's workforce was in agriculture,

and most of the population lived in villages. In that context, management wasn't about global banks or consulting firms. It was about dairy unions, cooperatives and NGOs. IRMA leaned into that niche, and for decades it owned it. Vivek Bhandari, a former director who served IRMA, recalled that Virgis wanted to ensure that IRME did not turn into another IIM. It was meant to serve rural producers and cooperatives, giving them managerial sophistication to compete in the market.

Even now, it still insists on being different. IRME doesn't look for the most marketable consultant. Admissions go beyond just CAT scores. candidates take a written test for rural aptitude and face interviews that gauge their willingness to work in villages. Yet, the results themselves are quite marketable. Tution for IRMA's two-year PGDEM is about $18 lakh rupees, and in 2024, placement packages saw a median of $15,000, with some ranging as high as $30,000. Basically, it goes to show that if you chose IRMA for the mission, you weren't really losing out on the money either.

Another thing IRMA is known for is its discipline, which extends well beyond just academics. Revenues have consistently outpaced costs and tuition alone has covered expenses over the past two years. On top of that, banks like RBI, Bank of Baroda, HDFC and Axis have funded endowed chairs. These are permanent faculty positions supported by donations. They bring credibility, attract top professors and add substantial funds to the balance sheet. But IRME's identity isn't in numbers. It's in the fieldwork. Every PGDM batch spends months embedded in villages,

a tradition that has been followed since its founding. Alumni remember it vividly. Pankar Balab, a 1992 graduate from earlier, recall that most students financed their studies with loans. These loans were then reimbursed if they worked for three years at any one of about 60 approved NGOs or cooperatives, including Amul and a national. National Dairy Development Board or NDDB.

This was ultimately IRMA's unique selling point. It didn't try to beat IIMs at their own game. As Sanjeev Jha, another alumnus put it, they couldn't have. But they could create their own category and be the best in it. And that is exactly what IRME was doing. Until right now. More on this in the next segment. Reinvention at IRME is no longer just about its MBA model.

It begins with its name. It is now Thribuwan Zahkari University, with IRME itself demoted to the IRME school under TSU. Thribuwan Das Patel, after whom the university is named, was the founder of India's cooperative movement and a founder of Amul. But the choice of his name over Vargis Koreans hasn't landed very well. A 1994 graduate told us that groups that saw Koreans' dedication to the institute up close are quite upset. Korean, a non-Gujrati Christian, famously sparred with a Gujarat chief minister and chased files from state offices all the way to the Prime Minister's desk. IRMA was his passion project.

Yet, his name is largely absent in the university's new Avtar. In fact, some TASU advertisements do not mention him at all. Now that's what the alumni have to say. Back in Anandh, though, the concern is more practical than symbolic. Construction on adjoining agricultural land for the new colleges haven't started yet, but the three new schools are already evaluating applications, adding work for professors without adding additional staff. Also, the faculty is now expressing apprehension over the extra layers and decision-making.

Bandari, the ex-director from earlier, told us that unlike the past, when IRME's board used to operate independently with NDDV support, it must now navigate academic councils, boards of studies, and a governing board. This introduction of bureaucracy could majorly slow decisions. In the middle of all of this, there has been major leadership shifts. The appointment of a new director, Saswatha Biswas and a new dean of student affairs has created a turbulent backdrop for this transition. For students, the bigger worry is placements.

Previously, IARMA ran its own process. But now, recruiters will access one large umbrella pool of TSU graduates. And as a current PGDM students said, a larger pool means increased competition. Stay tuned. IRME was founded to train people who could build institutions for rural India. Role's that traditional IIMs weren't preparing graduates for in the 1960s and 70s. Bandari told us that cooperatives are an organizational form while rural management is a learning paradigm. The distinction now matters more than ever.

By statute, IRMA has been folded into a cooperative university. But as Bandari pointed out, a cooperative is fundamentally a political organization and not the same as a producer company or a bank. He adds that IRME's mandate was always broader than just cooperatives. And how that spectrum fits into a cooperative university now remains to be seen. IRMA's success was so undeniable it didn't stay in Anand. it got noticed in Delhi. When the Ministry of Cooperation was set up in 2021 to reinvigorate India's cooperative sector,

IRMA was a natural choice to guide other institutions. Among its marquee projects is a national cooperation policy, which doubles as a census of India's more than 800,000 cooperative societies. DASH said TSU is already working with 20 NCCT or National Council for Cooperative Training Institutes across multiple states to handhold them. Out of the 300 institutions lined up for affiliation, one of the very first affiliates is the Waikunt Mehta National Institute of Cooperative Management or WAMNICOM in Pune.

The institute is running four academic programs and six certificate courses. With one down, there's 299 more institutions left to integrate. So, why 300 colleges? You see, India has dabbled with domain-based universities before. but with way fewer affiliates. The Central Sanskrit University had two, and the Indian Maritime University 18. The thing is, geography also complicates matters.

Most central universities have only one campus, but TSU must stretch across the country. At this stage, IRME's DNA is all that is holding everything together, because at its heart is rural management. And according to Balab, the logic is that cooperation is a strategy for managing rural economies, not the other way around. Now, the real question is,

was IRMA chosen as a national cooperative champion or just drafted as a lab experiment? Because its identity, legacy and character are all at stake. The act that created TSU promises IRMA's autonomy, but TSU is a central university with its own vice-chancellor, registrar and governing body, and the ministry is already running ads for these jobs. The gears are turning fast.

and the dust, construction or otherwise, will take time to settle. For Bhandari, the path forward lies in remembering the origin story and Korean's vision. He says the future success of IRMA will depend less on laws and more on how cooperative politics unfold, because TSU has made cooperatives the centerpiece of its mission. Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of the Ken India's first subscriber-focused business news platform. What you're listening to is just a small sample of our subscriber-only offerings. A full subscription offers daily long-form feature stories, newsletters and a whole bunch of premium podcasts. To subscribe, head to the ken.com and click on the red subscribe button on the top of the Ken website.

Today's episode was hosted and produced by my colleague Rachel Varghis and edited by Rajiv Sien.