What does the internship scheme of budget 2024 really mean and how can it be implemented better.

Ever since the Hon'ble finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman read the para 51 of the union budget speech yesterday, my phone has been ringing. Some are calling it the game changer while the others are (rightly) reserved and waiting for the implementation roadmap.?

In case you are unaware, an internship scheme to provide internship opportunities to 1Cr youth over next 5 years with the proposed central outlay of??66,000 Crore was announced. Of this ~10% (~6000 Crores) is expected to be borne by the companies hiring interns (and they can use their CSR budget towards it) and the rest would be borne by the central government. From an intern's perspective, a monthly stipend of??5000 for 12 months is supported by the government. All good as a headline; though the devil lies in the details - so let's dive in.?

Here is what the scheme gets right and here is what can be better when it comes to implementation -?

1. Internship is crowdsourcing of skilling; at scale. Announcing a formal scheme around this in the central budget amounts to recognizing them as a legitimate and an effective tool to skill our youth. This would go a long way in making internships mainstream in India. Millions of Indians heard about internships and discussed what they mean yesterday and that is a BIG thing.

2. While it is not explicitly stated, but the language used (top 500 companies, CSR budget) hints that this scheme is designed to encourage large corporations to hire more interns (20,000 interns per corporate if you go by the top 500 companies number). In reality, I suspect startups need this support a LOT more.?

Not only it would be challenging for one company to hire and provide meaningful internship to 20,000 interns but more importantly their reasons to not already hire interns in such large numbers is not stipend expense alone - there has to be a business case for them to spend the time and energy required to hire and mentor these many interns and by very nature of a large enterprise it is challenging.

Startups on the other hand badly need interns and often do not have the resources to pay them a stipend (or this additional 5K stipend by the government can make startup internships also more competitive) and if the implementation roadmap can consider how to bring startups in the beneficiary net of the scheme* - that would be the true game changer. It is not hard for 100,000 DPIIT recognized? startups and SMEs to hire 10 interns every year and contribute to the skilling of 50 lac youth (50% of the desired goal) over the next 5 years.?

Afterall the internship revolution of the last 10 years that we have witnessed on @Internshala is all thanks to startups!?

3. Some of the exclusions (such as excluding premium campus students) are sensible while others (such as excluding anyone who has anyone in the family being assessed for income tax) are well intended but will limit the talent pool available to companies and hence their participation in the scheme.

4. How would this scheme co-exist with the Apprenticeship Scheme/Act which has similar sounding provisions needs to be seen and is one of the biggest questions in my head.

5. And finally, the government intends to create an online portal to support this scheme - why reinvent the wheel?? Internshala hai na :)

*I have a roadmap in mind as to how this can be achieved; would detail that in another post.