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In a major revamp, country's premier rural management institute the Institute of Rural Management Anand (IRMA) has brought in changes in its board making way for fresh blood to take forward the institute set up by Father of White Revolution Dr Verghese Kurien in 1979.

For the first time since its inception, IRMA has put a cap on the tenure of its board members as well as chairman. At the same time, as many as six out of 17 board members, including some prominent names, have been replaced.

"Like most good institutions, where people have limit to the term they can serve, we too have brought in the changes so that new ideas can take the institute forward. One of these is fixing the tenure of chairman. From now on, any person can serve as institute's chairman maximum for two terms," eminent economist and IRMA chairman Dr YK Alagh told TOI on Saturday.

The last major administrative change that IRMA had witnessed was three years ago when Alagh had replaced founder chairman Kurien and the institute had got a new director in form of professor Vivek Bhandari.

With the new set of rules, any member can serve in IRMA board maximum for three consecutive terms of two years each and if required can be called in only after a gap of two years. Similarly, in case of chairman, a person can serve maximum for two terms of three years each. Effectively, whoever serves as chairman or board member in the institute will have a six years' cap.

IRMA's board consists of 17 members, including chairman, director, three persons of national significance, two representing prominent educational institutes, two faculty representatives, two IRMA alumni, three elected from IRMA society, one permanent representative of National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) and two ex-officio members representatives of Central and state governments.

With the changes, former Kerala chief secretary and chairman of Centre for Management Development V Ramchandran, former IPCL chairman Hasmukh Shah and founder of NGO Basix Vijay Mahajan have been replaced. While Mahajan has been replaced by founder of NGO Pradhan Deep Joshi, the institute has also decided upon replacements of Ramchandran and Shah but it will announce the names only after getting a formal confirmation from those dignitaries who have been selected.

Former IIM-A director Bakul Dholakia has been replaced by Gujarat Vidyapith's vice-chancellor Sudarshan Iyengar while professor Rama Baru of Jawaharlal Nehru University's Centre for Social Medicine and Community Health will continue as board member in the category of prominent educational institutes.

Similarly, out of the three board members elected from IRMA Society chairman of National Bank for Agriculture & Rural Development (NABARD) Dr Umesh Chandra Sarangi is the only one to continue in the board after being re-nominated. GCMMF's MD Vyas and chief executive of Seva Mandir, Udaipur Neelima Khetan have been replaced by Amul Dairy's MD Rahul Kumar and Banas Dairy's MD Sangramsinh Chaudhary.

Times of India article