Context: The Ministry of Human Resource Development is implementing the Central Sector Interest Subsidy Scheme for the welfare of students from rural areas with poor economic backgrounds.
Concerned Ministry: Ministry of Human Resource Development
Relevance:
Prelims: Indian Polity and Governance
Mains: GS II
Features:
- One of the major objectives of the Government is to ensure that no student is denied the opportunity to pursue higher education because he or she is poor. To achieve this objective, the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) launched a scheme titled “Central Sector Interest Subsidy Scheme” (CSIS) in 2009.
- The scheme provides full interest subsidy during the moratorium period on modern education loans without any collateral security and third-party guarantee, for pursuing technical/professional courses in India.
- Full interest subsidy is provided for education loans taken from Scheduled Banks under the Model Education Loan Scheme of Indian Banks’ Association. It is covering a period of course duration + 1 year.
- Students whose annual gross parental/ family income is up to Rs.4.5 lakhs are eligible under the scheme. The existing Scheme was modified with the approval of the Cabinet on March 28th, 2018.
- This scheme benefits all categories of economically weaker students for pursuing professional/ technical courses in India only and intends to provide affordable higher education.
- The Scheme envisages to uplift the students from the grassroots level and increase the number of qualified technicians/ professionals in the nation. CSIS aims to check the existing geographical imbalance with regard to Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) in Higher Educational Institutions.
