Budget 2024: For the young, qualified good news – Times of India

The budget has two bits of good news, with some riders, for educated young Indians, whether looking for a job, any job, or looking to fund their higher education.
First, GOI will shepherd a paid internship programme – over 5 years, 1cr young people will be interns for 1 year in India’s top 500 companies. The average works out to 4,000 interns per company per year.
Interns will be paid Rs 5k/month, plus will get Rs 6k as one-time assistance.Companies will bear the training cost as well as 10% of the internship cost from their CSR funds. GOI will provide the rest of the cash. The rider for interns is that after one year of gaining job experience, they will have to start a job hunt. GOI is betting that on-the-job training will make interns more employable.Details of the scheme are not out. We will have to wait for (a) list of companies that will take interns and (b) how many interns per year each of these companies will absorb over a 5-year period.
Industry responded positively, although they said the burden of cost sharing for the programme will be clearer once more details are out.
The second bit of good news is on education loans. Any student, irrespective of his/her family income, who doesn’t receive any govt benefit can get an education loan of up to Rs 10 lakhs for studying in Indian private higher education institutions. This will be thanks to GOI pushing financial institutions for disbursing such loans. Also, one lakh students will, through e-vouchers from GOI, get a 3% annual subsidy on interest payments on the loan, for the duration of the loan.

There were 11,13,000 undergraduate students in 2021-22, the year data is last available for, in private education institutions. So, potentially, this scheme can benefit lakhs of young students enrolling in private universities, where annual fees range from Rs 3 lakh to almost Rs 10 lakh. For, say, a course that cost Rs 20 lakh over 3 years, a student can get an easily available Rs 10 lakh loan. The rider is that we don’t know how GOI will select the 1 lakh students who will get the annual interest subsidy.