Summer Internship with Reserve Bank of India – Hardik Shah from IIM Shillong
Hardik Shah talks about the open-door culture and flexibility that he has experienced while interning with Reserve Bank of India–A bank of national prestige. Hardik is an MBA student at IIM Shillong. Read his rattling internship story here.
Summer Internship is one of the most important parts of learning of an MBA program where you get a firsthand chance to apply your thoughts and learning gathered over a period of one year hectic MBA schedule. And what could be a better place than the Central Bank of the country.
Reserve Bank of India (I would focus on Guwahati branch as I did my internship from there) is very professional in giving the internship work according to one’s background and career interest during the internship. The internship topics are mostly exploratory and guided by the interest of the participants towards taking the same forward. We were five students from our institute and each was assigned a different work area viz. Monetary Policy, Payment and Settlement Systems, Foreign Exchange, Coin Issue and Management and Financial Inclusion. The core of internship at RBI is the problem at hand is massive due to its scale and the solution to be suggested should be implementable keeping in mind India’s massive population, its state as well as regional diversity.
Reserve Bank of India works for the common man’s good and there remains a little doubt about the role of RBI in maintaining integrity and stability of India’s financial system, the ability of the bank to control the financial system of a country as massive as ours makes working of RBI different from most other places. The place is full of people who are always ready to extend their support to you in the best manner possible. Moreover unlike many traditional organization RBI not only promotes new ideas and thinking but also tries to implement them if backed by substantial logic. The best part of internship is you are not restricted in any sense by anyone in the scope of problem you want to address in your research, and also the intern is given complete flexibility to work as per his ideas and knowledge with tremendous support and brainstorming sessions with the experts in the field.
Hospitality is yet another place which beyond comparison to most of the other organizations. A formal session with each and every DGM, GM and even the regional director sparkling enlightening discussions makes a lot for learning for every intern. Farewell lunch and coffee with the regional director over a meeting, together with the formal feedback makes the organization a great place to work especially for people who are research oriented and want to excel in the area. At Reserve Bank together with the technical knowledge of regular matters over the economic and financial systems of the country, learning from experience is yet another thing which you could achieve from the mentors. Exposure to city side is also encouraged which substantiates the learning through data collection and theory with the practical world and gives insights about things which can never be covered in books and thereby making it a truly practical experience.
The summer interns are expected to work their way through during the office hours leading to work life balance and because of no unnecessary hassles or formalities, much of the time is saved for interns to excel in other areas. The internship gave me an opportunity to explore a completely new city to me (Guwahati). It also provided me sufficient time to study other topics of my interest which not only enriched me in other areas but also broadened my thinking which becomes important when you are solving a problem of massive scale.
Achievements of summer internship at Reserve Bank of India:
-Learned One Foreign Language – French
-2 Godly Novels: Cracking the Da Vinci Code (James Garlow and Peter Jones) and The Picture of -Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde)
-1 Drama: MacBeth – (Shakesphere)
-3 Business Books (Completed) & 2 Business Books (on the go)
-5 Online out of box courses (completed)
-2 Programming Languages – R and Python (Ruby on the way)
-Watched About 40 Movies and 5 all-time favorite Documentaries
-15 new restaurants
-Visit to Famous temples: Kamakhiya Temple, Umananda, Bashistha
-Explored one new city – Guwahati
-Visit to Exotic Places: Majuli (world’s largest fresh water Island), Pobitora National Park
-A new model designed and suggested for PSS to country’s central Bank for enhancing the financial systems of our country
-Meeting with Regional Director of RBI: Shri. S.S.Basik
-And the most important one, raised the flag of our prestigious institute to all time high with 4 other friends at RBI.
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