The Institute of Rural Management-Anand (IRMA) on Friday said it has been conferred an “A” grade by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC).
In August 2014, IRMA, founded by the late Varghese Kurien, had initiated the process for this accreditation, following which a peer team comprising of eminent academic experts had visited the Institute in January this year.
IRMA, which scored 3.3 out of 4, will now be able to follow its academic expansion plan of acquiring the status of a university or an institute of national importance, making it float new Masters’ degrees and Ph. D programmes, an IRMA official said.
Meanwhile, the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF) has instituted the Dr. Varghese Kurien Centre for Excellence (CoE) at IRMA for research in dairy management, cooperatives and producer organizations in agriculture and related fields.
The centre would work on emerging models of collectives and contemporary challenges of the dairy industry through research, consultancy, extension, outreach and policy analysis. Some of the areas of work included production and consumption in the organized and unorganized sectors of the dairy industry, issues of corporate governance following cooperative amendments, socio-economic impact of dairy farmers etc.
The centre would be coordinated by Shambu Prasad, who has been nominated as the Chair Professor.