Internship portal in the works, will match skill sets with opportunity

“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,” a senior government official told The Indian Express.

The portal is expected to be functional after the guidelines for the scheme are finalised by the MCA. The ministry is in discussion with the companies, the official said.

In the Union Budget for 2024-25 presented by the NDA government on July 23, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had announced the Prime Minister’s Package for Employment and Skilling with an overall outlay of Rs 2 lakh crore. The government is keen to ensure that those at the margins, especially those less skilled and less employable, are able to make the most of this internship scheme.

As part of the package announced in the Budget, internships are to be provided to 1 crore youth by India’s top 500 companies over the next five years. “They will gain exposure for 12 months to real-life business environments, varied professions and employment opportunities. An internship allowance of Rs 5,000 per month along with a one-time assistance of Rs 6,000 will be provided. Companies will be expected to bear the training cost and 10 per cent of the internship cost from their CSR funds,” Sitharaman had said.

In July, then Finance Secretary TV Somanathan, who is now Cabinet Secretary, had told The Indian Express that the government plans to talk to the top 500 companies and mutually agree on a “voluntary quota system” for taking on board interns under the employment package announced in the Budget 2024-25. The “quota system” would be based on the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) expenditure of these companies.

“We won’t be giving them (companies) the type of people they would normally recruit because we don’t want to give them a subsidy for people they would have hired anyway. We will have a negative list also: Say, nobody from IITs, IIMs, chartered accountants, cost accountants, nobody who is paying income tax, nobody whose parent is a government servant, etc. We want it for the people who are left out of the normal channels of recruitment,” Somanathan had said.