Dr Verghese Kurien resigned in June 2006 from the Institute of Rural Management, Anand (IRMA), to provide specialised training in managing rural development projects, which he founded and had chaired for 26 years since its inception.

Dr Kurien, widely known as the father of the "White Revolution" in the country, was the founder chairman of the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) in 1965. As the success of Amul spread, he set up the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation, the forerunner of the chain of mother dairies in the country, for marketing its milk and milk products.

In the course of the phenomenal growth of the cooperative dairy sector under his leadership, it became imperative to induct professional management to consolidate and steer future growth. With customary pragmatism Dr Kurien provided the answer by setting up IRMA in 1978 as an autonomous institution supported by the NDDB, the governments of India, the state government of Gujarat and the Swiss Development Co-operation, to groom rural managers to run the cooperatives and the agro-based industries.

IRMA started a two-year course in rural management to train young women and men to work for farmers and the rural poor. IRMA trains its graduates to be multi-faceted innovators and catalysts of rural change in the broadest sense of the term.

IRMA's mission is to promote sustainable, eco-friendly and socio-economic development of rural people through professional management of their institutions and organisations. It strives to achieve this mission by creating a new breed of professional rural managers who have the appropriate values and ethos; helping rural organisations and institutions in professionalising their management; empowering rural people through self-sustaining processes; building new rural management knowledge and theories through action oriented and problem solving research and consultancy; and influencing public policies.

More than 2,000 rural management professionals trained by IRMA work in a wide variety of rural organisations across the country and overseas. IRMA works closely with cooperatives, NGOs, governments, national and international agencies.

Compiled by Shubha Khandekar