Internship Experience in the Reserve Bank of India (RBI)

I had the opportunity of interning with the central bank of our country – The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) for my summers. Let me first take you through the selection process.

So the whole process began in the first week of September 2018 wherein we had to physically fill out the application form for domestic students which is also available on the RBI website. The institute collected and sent out all the application forms to RBI, which shortlisted 15 students from the institute for the next round - Personal interviews. This shortlist came by end of December and interviews were scheduled in the first week of January 2019. So basically we had a little less than 2 weeks to prepare ourselves for the personal interviews. Deepa ma'am, from the Placement Department arranged an interactive session with our immediate seniors who had interned with RBI. They shared with us the topics to be prepared and also took our mock interviews. I made notes too for reference as part of my preparations. Also Murthy sir, who taught us Banking & Insurance at that time, took RBI preparatory sessions where he covered the topics on which questions may be asked in the interview. His sessions were extensive enough to provide us with that extra push towards being more prepared. So a special thanks to Murthy sir. We had to go to RBI's Central Office at Fort for the personal interview round. My interview was based pre-dominantly on my work experience, which involved working with banks in concurrent bank audits. So a major chunk of the questions consisted of concepts revolving around the work I handled during my work experience. The results of final selects were announced a week later and finally 5 students were selected to intern with RBI. So this was a gist of the selection process.

Now I will talk about my internship experience there. I was allotted the Foreign Exchange Department (FED), Central Office, RBI. I interned at RBI from 02nd May, 2019 to 28th June, 2019. The first week was all about getting a hang of all the divisions working under FED. So it was basically an orientation week for me. The project allotted to me was 'Re-evaluating penal provisions under FEMA, 1999 - Bringing legislative harmony.' The project was majorly related to RBI regulations, FEMA and other statutes like Income Tax Act, Companies Act, SEBI Act, GST etc. I had to provide suggestions and an approach of bringing about a change in the existing regulations notified by RBI for cases which involve deriding any provisions of FEMA and penalty imposed thereupon. I won't go into the technicalities of my project as it won't be the same for the next batch of interns. But it is important to know that my project was a different kind of project which didn't involve core finance, yet I made sure to add things used in core finance to help support the validity of my project report. So it is all about applying all that you have learnt, in the right manner and at the right place. I even learnt a lot about the processes followed by RBI in areas other than my area of project, thanks to my mentor Mr Kamlesh Sharma, who gave me additional knowledge of different departments and other functions of RBI too. I also got an opportunity to attend a knowledge enriching session hosted by the present governor, Shri Shaktikanta Das on “India’s trade policy and the road ahead.” The people at RBI are very sweet enough and you can strike a conversation with them anytime. They are quite approachable and co-operative.

My summer internship experience has been extremely delightful enough and I am really grateful for the opportunity I got with RBI. I conclude by advising to make the best use of the opportunity you get for your internship and make the most out of it. All the best for the days to come.