Architecture students in India need to complete 100 days of work experience at a studio in order to get a training certificate. The competition for these precious internships encourages unscrupulous firms and prevents desperate students from complaining, Vasishtha said.

"With colleges churning out design professionals in excessive numbers, the demand-to-supply ratio is so skewed that procuring even an unpaid internship is a matter of relief."

It is a topic that nobody is keen to speak about. Dezeen contacted several studios for details of their internship programmes, but none have replied.

The Council of Architecture, India's regulatory body, issued only the briefest statement in response to our questions. "There is no guidelines framed for internship under the Architect Act," a CoA spokesperson said.

"Offering the interns an unpaid internship is an act of demeaning their hard work of five tiring years," Vasishtha said. "For a nation where development is taking place at a lightning speed and where infrastructure requirements have become an increasingly critical issue, we cannot afford to lose our young talent at the hands of an unfair practice."

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