North Eastern Students to avail Internship Programmes by IITs

To craft the process of amalgamation of northeastern states alive, Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) proposes to offer internships and exposure trips to students those belong to the North Eastern region. The programme titled ‘Ishaan Vikaas’ has received a green signal from PM and the HRD ministry and is likely to go on floors.

The thought proposed by Prime Minister, Narendra Modi to integrate the northeastern states was thought well and emphasized by IITs. IIT Guwahati’s Director, Gautam Biswas, in a presentation delivered to, Smriti Irani, HRD Minister and Prime Minister Narendra Modi proposed to host 2,016 schools students from northeastern states on their IIT campuses during vacation. It will also offered internships to 250 college students for a monthly stipend of Rs 8,000. The expenditure to conduct the entire internship programme is estimated to be around Rs 5.4 crore by IITs for hosting schools students and Rs 1.2 crore for the internship programme.

The initiative of such a programme was taken to demolish the imbalance between the north eastern students and rest of the country. According to the director of IIT Guwahati, “The students in this on are not aware of the opportunities in higher education and therefore lack the ambition to succeed.”

The programme will be hosted by 16 IITs and 5 IISERs where 2016 students of classes IX and XI will be selected from 504 schools in one academic year. Each of the 21 institutions will invite two batches of 32 students each during the summer break and one batch during the winter break having equal number of class IX and XI students. During their stay, school students will attend lectures, discussions, visit classrooms and laboratories. Also, they will have senior students as their mentors.