As Parliament meets for the monsoon session, a group of young students from all over the country will get a taste of Parliamentary business, working as interns with the MPs.
PRS Legislative Research, an autonomous institution engaged in studying Parliamentary policy issues, has roped in ten students as interns for a period of ten weeks.
"It is a pilot project meant for giving young students an opportunity to get a deeper understanding of the nature of politics and policy-making in the country," M R Madhavan, Senior Research Fellow at PRS, told PTI.
The students will spend four to five hours daily in assisting the MPs by getting them required inputs in a timely manner, Madhavan said.
The assignments will range from providing research support to MPs to assisting them in fulfilling their legislative and other Parliamentary responsibilities.
"The idea is to actually sensitise the young students and get them engaged with the legislative process," Madhavan said.
The internship programme will begin with a two-week orientation and training session. PRS will also work with interns prior to and during their internship to train them and to orient them to the different aspects of Parliamentary business.
During the training, the interns, who are either in their third year of graduation or pursuing a post-graduate degree, will get a token stipend of Rs 5,000 from PRS.
"PRS will collect a detailed feedback on the initiative and based on the experiences of both the students and the MPs, we will be able to expand the programme to a larger number of MPs and students in the future," Madhavan said.
