By Devirupa Mitra, IANS
New Delhi : In a country where a large chunk of MPs belong to the grey brigade, a group of young Indians will roam the hallowed corridors of parliament from next month when the Lok Sabha gets its first batch of interns.
Last month, six decades since India became a parliamentary democracy, the lower house of parliament announced it was starting a one-year internship programme.
“We put out advertisements in national and regional papers and also wrote to 85 universities in the country,” said an official of the Lok Sabha Secretariat, the administrative wing of the house to which the interns will be attached.
The objective of the programme, says the secretariat, is to impart “requisite skills and knowledge to enable the interns to develop a proper perspective about the role of legislature in our parliamentary system which, in turn, would help them while working in their own chosen fields in the future”.
The secretariat received 130 applications — for five positions.
“We will hold a preliminary meeting and make a short list. Then we will call the candidates for an interview,” the official told IANS.
The qualifications for the post include a post-graduate degree with a first class from any Indian or foreign university. The age limit is between 21 and 28 years.
The Lok Sabha interns will not be attached to any politician or political party.
“They will be strictly apolitical. They have been hired by the Lok Sabha so they will be serving all political parties,” said another secretariat official.
Officials of the Bureau of Parliamentary Studies and Training admit that since this is the first time the programme is being conducted, the exact functions of the interns are yet to be decided.
“We will now be formulating the pattern of the internship in the next few days,” the official added.
Internships have been an integral part of the private sector, with students often seeing summer training at companies before graduation. While a majority of the internships are unpaid, companies also fiercely compete to attract the brightest management or engineering students with six-figure paid internships.
The financial terms of the Lok Sabha internship may not be as generous but they are not offering peanuts either. Each intern would get a monthly stipend of Rs.18,000.
Since the programme is meant to acquaint the chosen five “with the working of democratic institutions in general and the Indian parliamentary system specifically,” they will be posted throughout the year with different departments of the secretariat. They will also be exposed to the functioning of the Rajya Sabha for a week.
Among other legislative branches in the world, there is a well-established tradition of internship programmes. The US Congress has an internship programme dating back to the 19th century for students above 16 years of age.
The Congressional pages, as the interns are known, have to work as anything from messengers to cloakroom assistants and interact with constituents.
There are also hundreds of unpaid interns who work with individual offices of congressmen and senators or on various house or senate committees.