Internship opportunity: Progress will need to be carefully monitored

The Union government has started rolling out one of the most discussed announcements of the first full Budget of the third Narendra Modi government. Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had announced in her July 23 Budget speech the government would launch a scheme to provide internship opportunities to 10 million youths in the top 500 companies in five years. This will help young people looking for employment to gain exposure to real-life business environments in different areas for a year. Selected candidates will be provided an allowance of Rs 5,000 per month along with a one-time assistance of Rs 6,000. Companies are expected to bear the cost of training and 10 per cent of internship costs from their corporate social responsibility funds.

A pilot for the scheme in 2024-25 was kicked off last week with internship opportunities in 24 sectors, including energy, hospitality, auto, and banking and financial services. Youths applying for these positions should not be employed full-time or engaged in full-time education. Candidates with a diploma from an Industrial Training Institute or bachelor’s degree can apply for internship. Graduates from premier institutions or with qualifications like chartered accountancy, or master of business administration, or any other master’s degree will not be eligible. There are other criteria that make candidates ineligible for this. The idea clearly is to target youths who may otherwise find it extremely difficult to find a position in a large organisation.

While the objective cannot be faulted and, given the fact that large companies have voluntarily opted for the scheme, progress has to be carefully monitored. The fact that only about 155,000 candidates applied for about 91,000 such positions on the first day surprised many. The number is expected to go up. As reported by this newspaper, artificial intelligence will be used to find eligible candidates and match them with suitable opportunities identified by the participating companies. According to estimates from the International Labour Organization, about a quarter of Indian youths are neither employed nor enrolled in any educational institution. Given this, it was expected that a large number of people would apply for these internship opportunities, which can significantly increase their chances in the job market. There have been many reported instances where a large number of people applied for low-skilled government or private-sector jobs. Although it’s more appropriate for an internship, one explanation could be the small age window of 21-24 years for eligibility. There could be other reasons, including living costs, if someone has to leave her village to take up the opportunity in big cities or industrial towns.

As the programme gains scale, all such related information must be carefully analysed. Since the government is allocating budgetary resources and expects large Indian companies to bear part of the cost — though it doesn’t affect their finances — it will be important to track the developments constantly. It is not necessary that interns will be absorbed in the same company after the completion of the internship. One of the big benefits of this scheme will be if interns trained for a year in large companies start finding employment in relatively small companies, including small and medium businesses. It’s often difficult for such firms to attract trained people and they lack the wherewithal to engage in training programmes. How the programme progresses will be worth watching as it may provide valuable policy insights.