Internship Scheme

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Context

• The Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) will announce the guidelines for the internship scheme over the next two weeks.

About the Internship Scheme

Background

• Skill development and creation of employable youth with skills for future is one of the key themes of the Union Budget 2024. With this objective, the Government has rolled out a new internship scheme for 500 top companies in India.
• Though participation under the scheme is voluntary, it does have benefits that organisations may want to explore to build workforce for future.
• Government is expecting that 1 crore youth will be skilled in 5 years under the scheme.

Who is eligible for internship?

• An individual between 21 to 24 years of age is eligible to apply for internship.
• However, such individual should not be employed or engaged in full time education.
• Also, candidates who have qualified from IIT or IIM or IISER or CA or CMA etc. are not eligible.
• Also, no member of candidate’s family should be assessed to income tax or should be a government employee.

What is the period and course of internship?

• Internship will be for 12 months.
• Organisation is expected to provide the intern an actual working experience on a skill in which the organisation is directly involved.
• At least half the time should be in actual working experience / job environment, not in classroom.
• In case the organisation cannot directly do so, it must tie-up with an organisation in its forward and backward supply chain (e.g. suppliers or customers) or other organisations / institutions in its group or otherwise.

What is the subsidy from the Government?

• Monthly internship allowance provided under the scheme is INR 5,000.
• For 12 months’ internship, the total cost will be INR 60,000 (INR 5,000 X 12 months) plus INR 6,000 as one-time additional payout for incidentals.
• Out of this, the Government will bear INR 54,000 towards monthly allowance plus INR 6,000 as grant for incidentals. Organisations will bear INR 6,000 (10% of internship allowance) plus training cost from their CSR funds.
• Also, companies can consider reasonable administrative expenses from their CSR funds.

How to select candidates for internship?

• Applications under the scheme will be made through an online portal.
• The organisation will select candidates for internship from a list available on the portal based on an objective criteria with emphasis on those with lower employability.

Talks of a new Portal

• A new portal is in the works to enable youth to apply for internships directly with the country’s top 500 companies.
• The portal will facilitate matching of skill sets of the applicants with the type of internship opportunities provided by the companies.
• The Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) will announce the guidelines for the internship scheme over the next two weeks, following which the portal will be made active for the prospective applicants.
• The idea is not to upload any existing database of the country’s youth on the portal, because some may not want to opt for this internship scheme.
• Instead, the companies will list out their internship opportunities and these will get matched with the information provided by the applicants, enabling a free flow of information on the portal.
• The portal is expected to be functional after the guidelines for the scheme are finalised by the MCA.

SOURCE: THE INDIAN EXPRESS