Coming, easy loans for poor students

Banks may grant education loans to students from economically weaker sections, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Published on: Jan 23, 2007, 03:36:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

After introducing 27 per cent quota for other backward classes in higher education institutes, the government plans to open yet another door in its education-for-all mission.

Banks may grant education loans to students from economically weaker sections planning to enroll in higher education institutions at four per cent interest rate from the next financial year. The government is considering a proposal to share the burden of lower interest rates with banks — both private and the public sector. At present, the interest rate on education loan is nearly 11 per cent.

The seven per cent concession will be shared equally between the government and banks, a senior government official said. “This is part of the private sector’s commitment to affirmative action for the weaker section,” said an official of the Confederation of Indian Industries.

The industry and government reached an agreement at a meeting convened by T.K.A. Nair, principal secretary to the Prime Minister, on January 12. Representatives of CII, Assocham, Indian Bank Association, FICCI, Education Secretary R.P. Aggarwal and Finance Secretary Vinod Rai took part in the meeting.

The Finance Ministry has floated a proposal in this regard. “If all goes well, an announcement may be made by the Finance Minister in the budget,” a senior government official said.

Before that, the government was working on various aspects of the scheme like increasing resources to pay subsidised interest rate to banks and the mean test for the economically weaker sections. Mean test is the upper annual income limit to make a student eligible for the scheme.

The government is considering increasing cess on education to fund the initiative.

If the proposal works out, the government will accept a key recommendation of the National Knowledge Commission. The commission had sought education loans at a lower interest rate for the educationally weaker sections.

Email Chetan Chauhan: chetan @hindustantimes.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

Check India news real-time updates, latest news on Hindustan Times and more across India.