Even as PM Internship scheme portal is open and applications are pouring in, concerns are being raised over implementation challenges the well-intentioned scheme could face.
Experts argue that the stipend of Rs 5,000 per month offered to each intern (for one year) might not be sufficient for a skilled worker since the scheme specifically talks about training youth with “valuable skills” and gain work experience.
“For a skilled role, a stipend of Rs 5,000 per month may not be sufficient, especially in the metros and tier-I cities across the country. Companies may have to shell out more stipend to retain these interns,” said head of a leading staffing firm, on condition of anonymity. Corporates may require to spend additionally to create the physical infrastructure and manpower for training the interns.
Also, the participating companies paying extra stipend over and above the Rs 5,000 cap might not be able to offset such expenses against the corporate social responsibility (CSR) spending, they said.
The other big scepticism around the scheme is the low visibility on its actual outcome. For instance, the scheme intends to produce a large number of skilled and semi-skilled people who will be employed to do high-quality work at high-paying jobs after their internships is over.
“The apprehension is that many of these interns may end up getting jobs – at the end of their internship – in the existing low-value jobs ecosystem with minimum wages,” said head of a hiring firm.
Experts said that India can learn from the German Dual Vocational Training (GDVT), a programme partly operated by the German government for the past few decades. “In this programme, in 90% of the cases, the interns are hired for the jobs where they are interning. China has also adopted this model due to its successful run,” said the head of hiring firm quoted above.
Given that the scheme envisages training of 10 million interns under the scheme over five-year period across top 500 companies, each company would roughly have to train 4,000 people every year. Some experts argue that many companies may not have this kind of training infrastructure. However, Balasubramanian A, senior VP and business head at TeamLease Services, said that many of his client companies have already digitised their training infra. “The companies already have a training infrastructure. They will just have to integrate their training modules for interns into their existing infra. But the companies might have to make their training more basic so that it’s accessible to the interns.”
As on Monday, two days after the portal went live, some 216 companies have posted more than 80,000 internships opportunities across 24 sectors. At the same time, over 155,000 candidates have registered on the portal.