JEEVIKA-ISB Internship Program for Young Graduate, Masters and Doctoral Students

Overview

The internship offers students exposure to rural development initiatives, focusing on women’s empowerment, livelihoods, and community strategies. ​ Internships are conducted at the State Project Management Unit and district offices, lasting 4-10 weeks during summer or winter. ​ Interns undertake field research, develop reports, and contribute to program improvement. ​ The program is open to students pursuing undergraduate, postgraduate, or research degrees in relevant disciplines, with international applicants requiring visas. Interns receive stipends (₹15,000/month for domestic, ₹30,000/month for international), recognition, and co-authored publications. ​ The program emphasizes research topics like value chains, impact assessments, market linkages, sanitation, and institutional mechanisms. Selection notifications are sent by late April (summer) and late December (winter).

Internship Outline

Bihar Rural Livelihood Promotion Society (JEEViKA), Department of Rural development, Government of Bihar in collaboration with Bharti Institute of Public Policy (ISB BIPP) invites application for the summer internship. The internship offers young master’s and doctoral students a unique opportunity to understand, observe, and analyze the interventions of one of the world’s largest rural development initiatives, which is transforming rural Bihar by empowering women socially and economically. The program will be conducted at the State Project Management Unit of JEEViKA in Patna, Bihar and the selected district locations of the state for a period of eight to ten weeks starting from April-May 2026.

Knowledge / Education:

• Recent post-graduate in public policy, economics, engineering, management, agriculture or a related field.
• Strong academic record.

Internship Process:

The selected candidates will report to the State Project Management Unit, JEEVIKA at the start of the internship and then would proceed to the concerned offices/places where the internship has been offered to them.

• During the 1st week, interns will be oriented towards the interventions under JEEVIKA, select a topic of their interest in consultation with the functional/thematic team and submit a synopsis.
• 2nd week onwards, the interns will start field work in the identified district or block to get exposed to and gain understanding of the selected interventions and JEEVIKA's field operations. Meanwhile, they will also start working around the topic, developing research tools, conducting FGDs, and collecting data/inputs from the field, identifying implementation gaps of the selected intervention or highlighting risk and mitigation strategies or suggesting improvement pathways for the pilot programs.
• By the end of 5th week, they normally return from the field, discuss the key observations with the thematic team and start working on their respective dissertation/internship reports.
• If needed, the interns may go back to field again for a week or two to cover the gaps in data/inputs based upon the feedback and guidance while also giving final shapes to their study/report.
• By the end of their internship (8th-10th week), they will submit their report, outlining their experiences, learnings and suggestions for BRLPS delivery or management mechanism, and make a presentation before inter/intra thematic team at the State project Management Unit of JEEVIKA in Patna.

Bharti Institute of Public Policy, ISB will support anchoring the collaborative program by providing formative mentorship and facilitating interactions at important milestones focussed upon understanding institutional research environment, planning field research and conducting socio-economic interactions, designing appropriate research tools and collecting structured information, analysing data points and developing key insights and perspectives. Please refer the attached brochure to know more about the eligibility, timelines, stipends and other relevant information.