BITS Pilani has a unique, standalone system in place which allows its students to get hands-on experience in the real-world projects through a programme called Practice School (PS). It’s an ideal platform for us to learn about an organisation’s culture and functioning. I was lucky to get my first preference, the Central Leather Research Institute (CLRI) in Chennai. It has a huge database and an economics department in place, which definitely was an ideal place for me, given my interest in applied econometrics.
On the first day, we reached the institute early morning and our schedules for the next two months were explained to us. For the next two weeks, we were given orientations of the numerous departments by department heads. Students, during the same time, were allowed to choose their own departments and the available projects on which they would be working. As I was certain about my preference, I went ahead and talked to the head of the economics department. After a detailed discussion, the faculty was convinced and agreed to mentor me for the project.
Headway
Initially, I was asked to look into the qualitative aspect of a project which did not intrigue me enough. So, I decided to share my concern with a member of the faculty. He explained how he was from the sociology department but would nonetheless speak with the scientist for my benefit, and a meeting was scheduled the next day. The meeting was unexpectedly fruitful, and he promised to help me with my project. The next couple of weeks were spent in discussing the details and other plausible explanations to the various prospects of the chosen project.
My project involved analysing the factors responsible for the export performance of leather garments in India. This topic required a great deal of knowledge about the leather and export industry, and so I spent considerable amount of time in CLRI’s library going through the previous research papers and other relevant material. After collecting relevant data, a regression analysis was made to find out the significant factors that determined the price of the exported leather garments such as the availability of raw material and disposable income of consumers. I drew the conclusion based on my findings and suggested that we include other parameters like seasonal effects in the regression to obtain better results. The final report had some unexpected results and I discussed the possibilities of them being true. It opened a new channel of thoughts for which I was praised, given the time constraint in which I finished my project.
Rajat Seth is 2018 BITS Pilani graduate.
Courtesy: internshala.com
