Union Budget 2020: One-year internship at local bodies for jobless young engineers, FM announces

Local bodies take up a lot of public programmes and they often lack manpower and so engineers can help out, the Minister said  
Budget 2020
Budget 2020

Unemployed engineering graduates can soon get an internship upto a year with an urban or local body, said  Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said during Budget 2020. This announcement comes as India struggles with an all time high unemployment rates since Independence.

Sitharaman said that besides students in general streams, students in sciences and technology streams need to improve their employment opportunities. Therefore the Minister said said that the government will start a one-year internship for 'fresh engineers' and that local bodies across the country will be providing these internships. "Local bodies take up a lot of public programmes and they often lack manpower. Now engineers can seek opportunities with the government. While they help out at the local bodies, they can also learn a lot" the Minister said. 

She also added that the one-year internship could help students plan their future better. 

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman kicked off the Union Budget Session on February 1, 2020 at 11 am.  

This budget is Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s second opportunity in seven months to refresh policy priorities to support an economy on a downward spiral. The Economic Survey that was released on January 31, a day before, projected India's economic growth at 6 per cent to 6.5 per cent in the next financial year starting April 1, saying growth has bottomed out. The growth in 2020-21 compares to a projected 5 per cent expansion in 2019-20.

Weak global growth impacting India as well as investment slowdown due to financial sector issues had led to growth dropping to a decade low in current fiscal, said the survey, adding 5 per cent growth projected for 2019-20 is the lowest it could fall for now.

The survey that sets the premise of the Union Budget, said that along with efforts for generating additional employment, special focus has been on improving quality of jobs and formalisation of the economy. The share of regular wage or salaried employees has increased by 5 percentage points from 18 per cent in 2011-12 to 23 per cent in 2017-18. In absolute terms, there was a significant jump of around 2.62 crore new jobs with 1.21 crore in rural areas and 1.39 crore in urban areas in this category. 

The survey also introduced Thalinomics to Indians — affordability of Thalis vis-à-vis a day’s pay of a worker, which has improved over time, indicating improved welfare of the common person. The survey stated that affordability of vegetarian Thalis improved 29 per cent from 2006-07 to 2019-20 while that for non-vegetarian Thalis by 18 per cent.

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