By Prof TN Krishnan

If 10 million youth are to be given internship in 500 companies, each company would have to accommodate 20,000 interns over five years, or 4,000 interns per year. This is a high number even for large companies.

The internship scheme proposed by finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman in her 2024 Budget speech – offering internships to 10 million youth in 500 top companies over five years – is a welcome step in improving employability. With a burgeoning youth population, creating jobs has been a challenge for the government. Impact of technology, specifically AI, global uncertainties and slowdown seem to have put a spoke in the wheels of job-creation. At the same time, market surveys have suggested that there is a big skill gap between educational demands and industry needs. Hence, this internship scheme comes at an opportune time.

Let’s do the maths

If 10 million youth are to be given internships in 500 companies, each company would have to accommodate 20,000 interns over five years, or 4,000 interns per year. This is a high number even for large companies. Many of them already run internships with technical/management institutions, and this could be viewed as additional compliance. If that spirit prevails within the organisation, the quality of work during internship would suffer.

Active participation from organisations is necessary for achieving the intended objectives of this scheme. Organisations would have to be given a voice in deciding the type and quality of interns they wish to have. Learning & development departments as well as managers have to play a role in providing a structure to this initiative, and the aim should be to make interns wrestle with the problems that organisations face, instead of classroom or training sessions.

Monitoring quality

If this internship is to be viewed as a prized career track for upskilling, the government has to have mechanisms in place to monitor its quality, and evaluate its impact on careers of the youth. While it may not be prudent to have documentation or formalisation – lest it be viewed as burdensome to the stakeholders – encouraging active partnership with organisations would be pivotal to its success. Identifying, crafting and listing business or technical problems that interns could help address, and ensuring resources and support mechanisms that interns could rely on, could be baby steps to having a meaningful experience for both the organisation and interns. Else, interns could end up doing the drudgery that no one else in the organisation wants to do. Mentors within organisations could be identified on a voluntary basis, ideally someone at mid to senior managerial positions.

While gaining technical skills is a big bonus when one works in a structured environment in a large enterprise, soft skills could be a big differentiator in being job-ready. Having interns do small capsules of formal training blended with opportunities to apply the learning on-the-job could reinforce their learning and enhance retention of skills, and more importantly, sensitise them on the challenges and skills involved in executing work.

Richer talent

This scheme is an opportunity for the youth from non-professional streams and from tier-3 and tier-4 institutions, who otherwise would have fewer such options to get work exposure in large organisations.

Organisations also stand to gain, as it would broaden their talent pool, with interns coming from non-traditional recruitment sources and perhaps some hidden gems as well. While in essence the scheme is timely and welcome, its success lies in the nitty-gritties and how well it is rolled out.

The author is professor, IIM Kozhikode. Views are personal