Janvi Arora
Infosys, TCS, and Maruti Suzuki Drive Corporate Internship Push in Haryana and Punjab
06 February 2025, Thursday
In the first round of internships under the PMIS, 4,920 candidates from Haryana and Punjab were offered a total of 6,732 internship placements by partner companies. Only 1,516 candidates have accepted 12-month internship offers.
Internship Status in Haryana and Punjab
Out of 4,382 applicants from Haryana, 1,293 candidates-the approximate 30%-have accepted the offers for internships. In contrast, 223 out of 538 candidates from Punjab (a 41% acceptance) opted for internship. These statistics were provided by Harsh Malhotra, Minister of State for Corporate Affairs, in a written reply to Rajya Sabha.
Interns eligible for opportunities offer a monthly stipend of ₹5,000 for the full period of internship-ten months. There is also a one-time grant of ₹6,000 for expenses related to cases of incidental nature. This initiative is intended to provide young professionals with exposure to real-world corporate environments as the pre-work corporate experience has great importance on Placements by the top-notch companies, across multiple domains.
Trends in national placements and scope of the scheme
On the national scale, the first round of the PMIS was launched on October 3, 2023, extending 82,077 internship offers to 60,866 candidates in 35 states and union territories. Of these, 28,141 candidates accepted internship positions with partner companies. In the budget for 2024-2025, the government aims for 1.27 lakh placements across 745 districts of India.
For Punjab and Haryana, 10,078 placements-having been allocated: 2,314 for Punjab and 7,764 for Haryana. The second round of the pilot phase started on January 9, 2024, and is still underway.
Eligibility Criteria and Partnerships for Internships
Launched by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in the Union Budget for 2024-25, the PMIS seeks to provide internship opportunities to one crore youths over the next five years. The purpose of the scheme is to empower youth with domain-specific and work-experience skills.
To be eligible for PMIS, candidates must be between the ages of 21 to 24 years; they must have completed at least their high school. Besides that, candidates holding ITI certificate or a diploma from a polytechnic institute or a degree like BA, BSc; BCom; BCA, BBA or B.Pharma may be considered. Moreover, candidates cannot be already in full-time employment or full-time education.
Leading companies supporting the internship program based on their CSR spending over the last three years are, among others, TCS, ONGC, RIL, Infosys, Wipro, ITC, L&T, HCL, Maruti Suzuki, BPCL, and Titan.
The Growing Trend of Migration Among Young People
The report on uptake of internships was made public just as the first batch of 104 illegal immigrants was deported from the US; 63 of them were from Punjab and Haryana. The growing proclivity among youth to venture overseas prevails due to the grim employment standards at home and dictates that PMIS should create a fulcrum for employing youth and creating, up to some extent, a sense of dignity for them in the flow of a job. It also highlights the escalating need for skill development programs like PMIS.
Experts emphasize the need to bridge the gap in employment provision through the introduction of job opportunities involving real-world exposure and professional experience. The government hopes that PMIS addresses these concerns and skillsets our youth in a way that would enable them to succeed in India’s ever-evolving job market.
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Aniket Sardhana
NI Bureau
