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IRMA NEWS

Milaap

PRM 26 & PRM 27 organised an all alumni meet during January 27-28, 2007. Aptly named, Milaap was attended by alumni from all the 25 batches that graduated so far. The meet opened with a seminar where alumni from the early batches namely C P Mohan (PRM-1), Shiv Kumar (PRM-2) and Apoorva Oza (PRM – 4), and Arun Nathan from PRM -21 were the speakers. The seminar generated a lot of interesting ideas and raised pertinent questions related to notions of development. The evening was made memorable by the students who put up a well organized cultural show. Day two beganwith Anand Run and the afternoon saw the participants engaged in intricate discussion on What is rural Management. The programme ended with a high energy musical evening by ‘Indian Ocean’. More details of Millap – the reunion as well as both the seminars are available in the articles “Milaap 2007 – A Memoir”, “A Tale of Fluctuating fortunes ” and “Rural Management – Different for Different People????”.

Bidding Adieu!

 Prof. Prabal Kumar Sen

Prof. Prabal Kumar Sen left the institute after a short stint of a little over five years. During his tenure he contributed to courses such as Economic Analysis for Rural Management-II, Institutional Credit Management for Rural and Social Development (ICMRSD) now it renamed as Rural Finance. He also coordinated several Management Development Programmes including Social Banking in Post-Reform Scenario, Institutional Finance for the Disadvantaged, and Empowerment of the Disadvantaged through Institutional Finance. He was also the Placement coordinator for the years 2005-2006 & 2006-2007.

Prof. Ajit Choudhuri

Prof. Ajit Chaudhuri who was with the institute for a short tenure of three months, completed his tenure successfully in early February. While he was here, he facilitated some sessions in a PRM level course “Strategic Issues in Development Organisations”. He also coordinated a workshop on ‘Resource Mobilisation’ in the 15th Management Appreciation Programme (VOLAGMAP). Along with Prof. R V Jayapadma, he also organized a series on sharing of experiences by alumni with the PRM batch on campus. The series was aptly named ‘Journeys’ and a total of seven alumni from first decade of PRM and belonging to diverse fields of work shared their journeys post IRMA with the PRM participants.

Rajan Memorial Lecture

This year the Rajan Memorial Lecture was organized on January 19, the day when T S Rajan, an alumnus from PRM-8 passed away while working for a grassroots level NGO. Shri Binoy Acharya, Director, Unnati – Ahmedabad delivered the lecture on ‘Need for Another Revolution in the Era of

Placements & Convocation of PRM-26

Seventy students of the 2005-07 batch of the two-year Post-graduate Programme in Rural Management (PRM) of the Institute, opted for participation in the Campus Placements. A total offer of 239 positions working out to 341% of the requirement were received from 57 organizations from across the country. Out of these organizations, 32 were invited to participate in the campus placement process. NGOs were invited on Day-1 of the placement session to provide these organizations with a level playing ground in the matter of hiring of eligible candidates. The process commenced on February 25, 2007 and concluded by the forenoon of February 27, 2007.

NGOs hired 10 students accounting for 14.3% of total, institutions with social initiatives placed 9 (12.9%), dairy sector (comprising NDDB and GCMMF) picked up 19 students working out to 27.1% of the total, banking & finance sector hired 30 accounting for 42.9% of the total and the lone agri-business company, namely, ITC Ltd recruited 2 students representing 2.9% of the total number of students placed from the campus this year for its e-choupal initiative.

The 26th Annual Convocation was held on April 3, 2007. The convocation was attended by family members of the participants from the graduating batch, invitees from the sister organizations, some alumni, and members of IRMA community.

Admissions PRM 2007-09

This year, a total of 7,883 candidates applied for admission to the Post Graduate Programme in Rural Management (PRM). The number of applicants this year was higher by about 18 per cent as compared to last year.

The admission process was completed in two stages with a Written Examination at Stage-one and Personal Interviews and Group Discussions at Stage-two. The written examination was conducted on November 26, 2006 at 27 centres across India. Seven new centres, namely, Varanasi, Pantnagar, Dehradun, Rajkot, Udaipur, Pune and Raipur were added this year to increase the coverage. Another change was replacement of two existing centres by two new centres to improve the accessibility of the candidates (Vishakhapatnam by Vijayawada, and Kozhikode by Kochi).

About 92 per cent of the applicants (7269) took the written test. Based on their performance in the written test, 384 candidates were short listed for stage-two of the admission process. Out of these, 127 candidates were given offer of admission based on their performance at both the stages. These candidates included 35 female candidates, 3 SC/ST candidates and 4 Sponsored candidates. As per their academic discipline during graduation, 31 per cent of these finally short listed candidates belonged to Agriculture stream, 26 per cent to Engineering stream, 20 per cent to Science stream, 11 per cent to Arts stream, 5 per cent to Business Administration and Commerce stream, and 7 per cent to various other streams.

Out of the finally short listed candidates, 118 have already accepted the offer of admission. In addition to this, one candidate selected last year has been allowed deferred admission this year.

Admissions FPRM 2007

For the admission to the Fellow Programme in Rural Management (FPRM) 2 0 0 7 , we re c e ived 6 8 applications. Of these one was a PRM alumnus who was exempted from writing the entrance test. A total of fifty eight candidates wrote the written test, which is the same as that for the PRM admission.

Based on the test scores the FPRM Committee invited 9 candidates for personal discussion and interview. Finally, 6 candidates have been made the admission offer.

Of these 6 candidates, two are for rural and agriculture marketing, two are for micro-finance management, and the rest one each are for development management, and rural economics and natural resource management specialisations.

This would be the 6th batch of FPRM.

Alumni Elections

The IRMA Alumni Association has been reactivated with election 2007 declared early this year. After announcing the elections the executive committee is now in place with the responsibility being shouldered by the following members:

♦ Dr. Satender Arya, PRM-9, President

♦ Shri Arun Nathan, PRM-21, Vice President

♦ Shri Vaibhav Bhamoriya, PRM-20, Secretary

♦ Shri G Sastry, PRM-6, Representative Southern India

♦ Shri Kumar Anshul, PRM-22, Representative Western India

♦ Shri P K Roy, Accounts Officer, IRMA, Treasures (Ex-Officio)

 ♦ Prof. Madhavi Mehta, Alumni Coordinator, IRMA, Director ’s Nominee (Ex-officio)

Two positions, namely representative for Northern India and Eastern India are vacant and interested PRM graduates are requested to send in nominations as per the procedures laid down in the last issue of Network.

IAA Welcome Ceremony for PRM 26

The first activity to be taken up by the IAA after recent revamp was the welcome ceremony for PRM-26 and felicitation of the student achieving the 1st position in academic performance in the graduating batch. On April 1, the IAA organized the welcome ceremony which was attended by the participants of the graduating batch as well as some office bearers of the IAA and a few alumni from in an around Anand. On the eve of Convocation, Shri Neerajkumar Biyani, topper of PRM -26 was declared the winner of the IAA trophy by Shri R S Sodhi from PRM – 1 and was given the trophy at the hands of Dr. Y K Alagh, Chairman, IRMA.