Institute of Rural Management Anand

Institute of Rural Management Anand was founded in 1979 at the instance of Verghese Kurien, the architect of India's dairy cooperative movement, and it remains the country's defining institution for rural management. Its postgraduate programme trains managers for cooperatives, rural enterprises, development organisations and agribusiness, with fieldwork segments embedded in villages — a structure that separates it from conventional MBA programmes. Anand, the Gujarat town that built Amul, surrounds the campus with the cooperative economy its students study. Admission uses national management test scores followed by IRMA's own selection, and the campus is fully residential. It holds a NIRF rank of 55 and an A NAAC grade. It suits candidates genuinely committed to development, cooperatives or agribusiness careers; those chasing conventional corporate placements would be working against the institution's purpose.