25 July 2026

From: A Computer Engineering Graduate

Subject: A Fifth Demand — Reduce Interest Rates on Bachelor's Education Loans in India to 2–3%, Applicable to Existing and Future Loans

Respected Sir/Madam,

I am writing to you as one among lakhs of Indian students who took an education loan to fund a bachelor's degree in this country, and who now stands at the start of my career already carrying a debt that will shape every decision I make for years to come. I am following the Cockroach Janta Party's movement closely — the fight over NEET irregularities, Sonam Wangchuk's hunger strike, the march to Parliament — and I believe there is a crisis sitting directly underneath it that has not yet been named as a formal demand.

I come from a lower middle class family. My father was already repaying a home loan and personal loans, and our household income was modest. To send me to study engineering, he had no real choice but to take an education loan — the fees for a four-year bachelor's degree at a decent college run to 25 lakh rupees and above. This is no longer unusual. Most private and semi-private engineering, medical, and professional colleges across India charge similarly, and most families like mine must borrow to afford it.

What is rarely discussed is the interest rate attached to these loans — typically 7 to 9 percent. Compare this to students who go abroad for higher education, who frequently receive loan structures with far better terms relative to their eventual earning potential. A student who stays back and studies in India, at Indian interest rates, is given no such cushion — and is pushed into one of the most competitive and uncertain job markets India has ever seen. My own college alone has over 10,000 students, and in my batch of engineering graduates there are more than 3,500. There is no version of today's job market — with unemployment already high, and entire categories of entry-level work now being reshaped by AI — in which all of us can earn the return our loans quietly assume we will.

The result is a debt trap that begins before a single rupee has been earned. A student graduates, enters a market that cannot absorb everyone, and starts their career already servicing high-interest debt. Every decision that follows — which job to take, whether to explore, whether to take a risk, whether to pursue further study — gets made not on merit or ambition, but on which option services the loan the fastest. The loan decides who we are allowed to become before we have had any chance to decide for ourselves.

Our Demand:

• Reduce the interest rate on education loans taken for bachelor's degrees in India to 2–3 percent, in line with subsidised student-loan models used in several developed economies to protect young borrowers from exactly this kind of debt trap.
• Apply this reduced rate retroactively to existing/old education loans already being repaid by students and graduates, not only to loans issued going forward — so that students who borrowed under the old high-interest regime are not left permanently disadvantaged.
• Treat this as a national priority alongside examination reform, since NEET aspirants, unemployed graduates, and loan-burdened students are, in large part, the very same people.

You have already shown that a demand grounded in real student pain and real numbers can move this government to the table. I believe this demand belongs on that same list. It is not a fringe issue — it sits beneath almost every engineering, medical, and professional college in this country, and beneath every family like mine that took on debt believing in the promise of a better future for their child.

I request that this be formally taken up as one of the movement's core demands, and raised before the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Finance, and before Parliament by every opposition party willing to stand with India's students.

Thank you for reading this letter, and thank you for building a movement that has, for the first time in a long while, made space for the voice of students like me.