Loan waiver policies are ostensibly political decisions, but surprisingly there have been no political analyses of the policy. The paper presents a political study on the policy through a descriptive analysis of a comprehensive primary data set that comprises all loan waiver announcements in India over the last three decades. The findings bring into light the political, economic and environmental factors that have had a bearing on the politicians’ choice to introduce waivers. Further, it highlights that politicians choose from a variety of waiver policy designs, and this choice has substantive implications for the size of the waiver programme.