PM Internship Scheme: Employment is one of India’s foremost challenges today. The government is not only obliged to provide jobs to millions entering the workforce every year but also to leverage the young populace to fire the economic engine. However, helping young people with education and then finding jobs is one step and helping them find meaningful employment as well as imparting necessary skills for the labour market is a different ball game.
The Prime Minister Internship Scheme (PMIS) was conceived to tackle this gap. The initiative aims at providing young people exposure to large companies and help them acquire workplace skills. This is hoped to eventually improve their employability. However, the pilot has underdelivered.
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PM Internship Scheme loses candidates after offers
The problem is not a shortage of opportunities but opportunity on a government portal itself is not the same thing as an opportunity a young person can realistically avail. The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance has now asked the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) to overhaul the scheme before it moves to full-scale implementation.
The committee has reopened an important debate- instead of much money the government can allocate, the success of a scheme depends on whether the design of the programme also tackles the constraints faced by its intended beneficiaries.
The recommendations go beyond the usual calls for faster utilisation of funds. The panel wants a time-bound action plan, measurable performance indicators and a structured support system for travel, relocation and accommodation. This is especially needed for women and rural youth who may not have enough resources to do so on their own.
PMIS was announced in the budget for FY25 with an overall outlay of ₹63,000 crore over five years. The idea was that the scheme can create internship opportunities for one crore young people in the top 500 companies. For the pilot, ₹2,000 crore was provided in 2024-25. Of this, Rs 123.7 crore, or less than 0.2% of the total, has actually been spent until March 15, 2026. The government spent Rs 46.7 crore on marketing and advertising. The committee has also highlighted that the original projections did not adequately account for the scheme’s capacity.
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PMIS should measure what happens after selection
The participation numbers for the PMIS scheme are dismal. According to a Right to Information (RTI) application filed with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, which runs the scheme, till April 30, 2026, companies posted 2.97 lakh internship opportunities across two rounds and more than 350 companies participated. However, this is nearly a tenth of the two-year target. These opportunities then shrunk to 1.73 lakh actual offers.
Yet, only about 18,000 of those given these offers showed up for work. Only around 5,200 stayed to the end. In the first round, the dropout rate was as high as 53.6%. Many candidates declined or abandoned offers because internships were located too far from where they lived, the proposed 12-month duration was too long or the roles did not match their interests.
However, that is not the reason or the churn rate. Students also complained that at many times, they were provided internships in a domain that was unrelated to what they had studied. The education and job crisis finds expression in protests over botched recruitment exams and what led to the rise of the Cockroach Janta Party.
However, students are not the only casualties. Complaints by India Inc show the other side of the story.
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Infosys co-founder NR Narayana Murthy had once famously claimed that 80% of youngsters are not trained suitably for any job. CP Gurnani of Tech Mahindra had also once said that 94% of engineering graduates are not fit to be hired. Recently, the India Skills Report estimated that just over half the graduates in India were employable, an improvement from a third a decade ago but still a large share. This gap between education and employability was the first priority area for the PMIS scheme.
The PMIS scheme should be used as a case study for where public policies falter. The pilot has highlighted a recurring problem in public policy- assuming supply does not automatically create demand. Limiting employers to 500 meant that many of the opportunities were concentrated in a few regions. A company may offer an internship in Bengaluru, Mumbai or Gurugram, but for a young person from a smaller town, the stipend is an important component of the decision.
Other factors are also at play such as the cost of reaching the city, finding accommodation, managing food and transport. For women, safety and family acceptance adds another layer of hurdles. The attractiveness of an internship may lose its sheen when real economic costs are added.
The government has already taken some steps towards finetuning the PMIS programme to meet the ground reality. In March, changes were made to PMIS recognise such as age eligibility was widened from 21-24 years to 18-25 years, monthly assistance was increased to Rs 9,000 and internships were given greater flexibility, with durations of six to nine months rather than a fixed one-year period. The government also expanded the eligibility to final-year undergraduate and postgraduate students.
The more important reform, however, is to make the scheme responsive to actual behaviour. For example, instead of gauzing the success by how many jobs were posted, the real metric should be the proportion of offers accepted as well as the number of candidates who not only signed up for it but also completed their internships. Further things to consider are conversion into jobs and the distribution of participation across gender, geography and socioeconomic groups. A programme that posts one lakh opportunities but sees some thousands filled should not be considered successful. This is where the committee’s insistence on measurable performance indicators assumes significance.
Moreover, the committee has also highlighted that internships cannot be designed entirely from the perspective of employers. The corporate sector may be willing to create positions, but the state is responsible for ensuring that those positions are accessible to the young people. Ultimately, the idea is to help the youth get jobs which they find relevant. This is especially true for women.
Indian economic policymaking needs a shift from merely announcing large programmes to making them capable for implementation.
The PMIS pilot was a launchpad and an important experience for the government, even if it has not yet delivered the outcomes originally imagined. It has exposed the gaps between an internship being available and an internship being usable. The next phase should focus on helping a young person who needs experience with real opportunities and emerging with a better chance of finding productive work. That would be a far more meaningful measure of success than the number of internships advertised or the thousands of crores earmarked for the scheme.