Research & Publications
Research & Publications
IRMA: The House that Kurien Built
Of all the magnificent institutions built by Dr. Kurien IRMA was, perhaps, closest to his heart.
During his long stint as a serial institution builder Dr. Kurien emerged as a champion of farmer cooperatives. The National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) was a charitable trust and companies like HPCL, IDMC and Mother Dairy were owned by it. At one time the Tribhuvandas Foundation was a leading NGO of Gujarat, which Dr. Kurien helped set up along with several other institutions. There were few institutions, however, on which he showered as much care and attention as he did on IRMA.
The idea of IRMA was not on anybody's mental map until 1978.Much before that, however, a realisation had dawned that Operation Flood II would not be able to take off without a cadre of trained managers. Dr Kurien offered to fund a separate course at IIMA to train cooperative managers but Ravi Mathai persuaded him against the idea. This led to the setting up of a large HR division within NDDB entrusted with the responsibility of producing cooperative managers. Ravi Mathai had, by then, introduced Dr Kurien to Kamla Chowdhury, and both he and the latter convinced Dr Kurien about building an autonomous institute with a distinct culture and values of its own. Sreekant Sambrani, who had done a stint at IIMA's Center for Management in Agriculture, was hired to head the cell. While several names for the new institution were doing the rounds Sambrani helped freeze 'Institute of Rural Management, Anand' (IRMA). To dissociate it from the 1963 comedy Irma la Douce Sambrani wanted IRMA to be pronounced as ARMA and kept correcting anyone who referred to it as EERMA, but gave up after sometime.
While returning from a trip to Europe Dr Kurien stopped by for a few hours to talk to the Swiss Development Cooperation (SDC) about IRMA and returned to Anand with a commitment from the Swiss to fund the construction of the entire campus, including the class room complex, auditorium hostels, faculty housing and everything else required to create an institution of character. The Swiss along with the Ford Foundation also offered to fund a faculty development program. Everything fell into place surprisingly quickly. IRMA looked like the right idea at the right time coming from the right man. The decision was taken to start a one-year program in rural management in 1980 using NDDB's hostels meant for farmers to house students. The newly constructed diagnostic laboratory-which later did some path-breaking work on bovine diseases-was converted into a makeshift office and class room complex for a young IRMA.
Kanvinde and Rai, who happened to be among the best known architects of the country, were asked to design the IRMA campus on a 65 acre plot adjacent to the NDDB campus. There were opinions galore expressed on what the campus should look like. Someone suggested a rustic, austere place mimicking a village. Dr Kurien brushed it aside saying, "You cannot produce kings in a pigsty." Building an educational institution was a wholly new experience for him. But he was soon forming his own vision of what was required. His vision of IRMA was of an institution that would produce young men and women who would think big, dream big and, in time, act big and make their alma mater proud. He wanted IRMA to reflect the significance of India's agricultural and rural economy to the country's development. He would only have the best. Later, after IRMA's beautiful new campus was ready, he would proudly say: "I have built an invisible wall around IRMA. While they are here, I want IRMA students to be protected from the filth and the pettiness all around and dream big for the country and themselves."
Dr. Kurien brought together a battery of some of the most experienced management thinkers and practitioners in the country to guide the institute through its formative years. These included Ravi Mathai, Kamla Chowdhury, A M Khusro, Hanumantha Rao, GVK Rao and several others who represented the best talent and wisdom available in different aspects of Indian economy. He welcomed all of them to shape the philosophy of the new Institute. But when it came to building the campus he appointed himself the Site Engineer-in-Chief. Once every week he would drive around the campus and ask detailed questions of the contractors and engineers. Attention to detail was the hallmark of his management style. He never tired of telling us, "The Lord lies in the detail". Few campuses in India remain as pretty and well-groomed 30 years after construction as IRMA. This is undeniably one of Dr. Kurien's lasting legacies.
As IRMA came into its own and as Dr. Kurien's early advisors moved on, there developed an interesting relationship between the latter and IRMA's faculty- which might be best described as one of creative tension, and managing this became a critical part of the Director's responsibility. He abhorred the way he saw 'academic freedom' being turned into licence in Indian academia and wanted IRMA to be spared that. "Academic freedom is the freedom to think what you like and advance alternative theories, and not turn your back on your duty to your institution, students and society," is what he would say. He was also suspicious of faculty members travelling abroad, especially to the West: "Why don't we go to Bangladesh or Africa or China to learn and do research? Are the US and Europe sole repositories of knowledge about development?" It was not easy to answer these questions. He was also wary of IRMA being overwhelmed by IIMA's influence and wanted IRMA to chart its own course. He would often say, "Your best rural managers will be odd-balls but your selection of students based on the objective written test will keep most such odd-balls out of IRMA."
It would be wrong to say that Dr Kurien's own management style was closer to Theory Y than to theory X. But he was an extraordinary example of an authoritarian manager who seldom actually used authority. He inspired people like nobody else did. During the 1950's and 60's in Amul he acquired and retained a world-class management team that few multinational companies could boast of. His managerial authority blended with his personal power and charm potently to keep his colleagues and co-workers in a permanently charged state. The fact that he pursued a larger-than-life goal over personal gain added to his magic. He took pride in living in an air-conditioned house and moving around in an air-conditioned car paid by farmers. He insisted that farmers were not bad paymasters if their managers helped them improve their lives.
Dr Kurien seldom aired his views about what rural management meant to him. The debate seemed meaningless to him and he thought IRMA was wasting time splitting hair on it. I strongly feel that IRMA's aim should be understand the operating system of India's rural economy; his own spin was that this understanding should be used to further farmer's interests. While making a difference between rural management and public administration he was clear that IRMA was not best suited to train administrators in the conventional sense of the term. Organising rural producers in viable organisations for dairy, oilseeds, fruit and vegetables, salt, fishing, canal irrigation, health and a range of other economic activities was, in his view, a large and important playing field for IRMA. He also saw the rural manager as a man of action more than of analysis. Honing decision-making skills was at the heart of rural management in his scheme of things. But he also believed that in order to make sound decisions a rural manager must have a good understanding of his milieu.
Dr Kurien's ideas of management were based on a distinct model of man. He abhorred treating farmers and rural people as poor and helpless. He never approved of treating them with pity, even sympathy; instead, his constant refrain was that the farmer should be respected for his innate wisdom. He believed in opening the door of opportunity for the farmer. "The human machine is a wonderful machine', he used to say, 'the more you load it, the harder it works."
Dr Kurien always saw IRMA as belonging to a class of its own, not to be compared with other business schools. And yet he expressed child-like joy and pride when a survey of management institutes in India ranked IRMA amongst the top 10. He thought it was a sign of IRMA coming into its own. Had he been alive today he would have been overjoyed to see IRMA's ranking jump from 41 to 22 in a recent Business India survey. The real tribute IRMA can pay to its founder is to get counted amongst the top five management institutes of the country, a feat that is wholly within the realm of possibility.