How will Tribhuvan Sahkari University take shape?

We have been working for the cooperative sector for the last 45 years. When IRMA began, it was confined to the dairy cooperatives. Now we are getting converted to a national university, where we will play a major role in education, training and research related to India’s cooperative sector. The idea is to meet the education and training requirements of the entire cooperative value chain that extends from our villages to a cooperative body. The mandate is now much bigger.

For the new university, we will need a much bigger infrastructure. It will operate as a hub-and-spoke model. The current IRMA campus will become the hub of the university at Anand. The spokes will be the institutions affiliated to us.

What is the future for IRMA after the passage of the Bill? Will it continue to exist?

IRMA will be part of Tribhuvan Sahkari University. It will become a school of the university offering rural management as the flagship programme. This way, the brand and legacy of IRMA will continue to be preserved. IRMA will become the centre of excellence in rural management under the university.

After consultations, like IRMA we will set up other schools within the university which offer sector-specific programmes including those for dairy cooperatives, sugar cooperatives and poultry and livestock, cooperative banking and agribusiness management, among others. To make it pan-India, we will have schools in other affiliated institutions that will offer similar courses.

What about the funding for the new university?

We will get ₹500 crore from the Government of India for developing infrastructure and other requirements of the new university. We will need new buildings for the schools, staff quarters, administrative building and student facilities. The scale and size will be much bigger than what exists on ground. The university will need a bigger set-up and therefore we will have to add more infrastructure. Otherwise, it will be running in a self-sustaining mode and we will be getting support from the cooperative sector.

We plan to have a pan-India presence. In States with higher density of cooperatives, we will begin setting up four-five institutions that are affiliated to Tribhuvan University. If demand grows, we will have more such affiliated institutions. We will be able to reach a steady state in the next four-five years. During this period, we plan to provide affiliation to 250 institutions under this hub-and-spoke model.

Will the new institution have academic and administrative autonomy similar to the one enjoyed by IRMA?

Like other Central universities or other Centrally-funded technical institutions, the university will have its own executive body, which will be the primary decision-making body. For IRMA, the academic autonomy will continue and it will continue to offer the current programmes as long as its Board of Governors decide to keep offering the courses. As much as possible, we are trying to retain the legacy and the wealth of programmes running successfully for the last 45 years.

What are the first steps the university will take?

The idea, initially, is to use the existing infrastructure and not duplicate it. There are close to 300 small and medium educational institutions associated with the cooperative sector. Some are run by the National Council for Cooperative Training (NCCT), National Cooperative Development Corporation, National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development. We will try to bring all the existing institutions serving the sector first. This will ensure there is no duplication of infrastructure. We have already started stakeholder consultations with the 20 institutions under the NCCT to convey the process and benefits of affiliation with our university. These institutions are present in Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Odisha, Bihar, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Assam and West Bengal. Wherever there is a requirement, we will handhold them. We will be running degree, diploma and certificate programmes and we need affiliations to run them.