Relevance IN - Prelims ( about WHO solidarity trail+ about potential drugs )
What's the NEWS

• India will soon participate in WHO solidarity trial for developing potential drugs for COVID-19.
• India has indicated willingness to go for vaccine trials for country's population.
• Currently there are around 30 groups which are working on developing vaccines of which 5 are already going for animal toxicity studies.

• Solidarity Trial was announced by the WHO last week as an international trial , which will compare the safety and effectiveness of four different drugs or drug combinations against COVID-19
• WHO is going to focus four most promising therapies as the part of the International trial. These include

1. An experimental antiviral compound called remidasvir
2. The malaria medications chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine;
3. A combination of two HIV drugs, lopinavir and ritonavir;
4. and that same combination as 3 plus interferon-beta, an immune system messenger that can help cripple viruses.

• The ICMR had approved the use of hydroxychloroquine for prophylactic use in certain cases, the DCGI has also given its nod to combination of two HIV drugs, lopinavir and ritonavir; to be used in certain cases.
• WHO's Solidarity trial is expected to witness participation from many countries including Thailand, Argentina, Canada, France, Iran, and Spain.
• The trial will not only test different drugs but will also compare their effectiveness.

Human Resource Development
National Online Education Platform SWAYAM

Relevance IN - Prelims ( about SWAYAM + SWAYAM Prabha ) + Mains ( GS II Issues relating to development and management of Social Sector/Services relating to Health, Education, Human Resources
What's the NEWS

• The access to the National Online Education Platform SWAYAM and other Digital Initiatives has tripled in the last one week.
• The growth has been seen after provision of free access to best teaching learning resources at SWAYAM while earlier the courses of SWAYAM were time bound for which registration needed to be done in advance.
• Now to utilise this lock down period productively and to promote online learning, it can be viewed by any learner free of cost without any registration.

Know! all about SWAYAM

• SWAYAM has a repository of 1900 courses which are now being accessed by people from over 60 countries.
• The significant majority is from India and the other countries include USA, UAE, Germany, Nepal, Singapore, Canada, United Kingdom and Australia.
• The videos of the SWAYAM Prabha DTH TV channels are viewed by around 50,000 people every day.

SWAYAM (Study Webs of Active-Learning for Young Aspiring Minds)

• MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) platforms are fast gaining popularity in India.
• Many Indian students and working professionals have now started embracing MOOC platforms to develop deeper knowledge in their respective subjects.
• Considering the popularity and relevance of MOOCs, Government of India has also launched an indigenous platform, SWAYAM.
• SWAYAM (Study Webs of Active Learning for Young Aspiring Minds) is basically an integrated MOOCs platform for distance education that is aimed at offering all the courses from school level (Class IX) to post-graduation level. These courses are offered by the faculties of leading colleges and universities in India.
• The Categories of courses include - Engineering, Science, Humanities, Management, Language, Mathematics, Arts and Recreation, Commerce, General, Library, Education.
• The current SWAYAM platform is developed by Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) and NPTEL, IIT Madras with the help of Google Inc. and Persistent Systems Ltd.

SWAYAM Prabha.

• It may be noted that MHRD has also launched 32 DTH (Direct-To-Home) educational TV channels called SWAYAM Prabha. The DTH channels would broadcast education content (created on the MOOC platform, SWAYAM) to students 24X7.

Other online platforms

• The National Digital Library is now being accessed by about 43,000 people daily which is more than double of the usual number of persons accessing it.
• The Education portals of NCERT like Diksha, e-pathasala, NROER and NIOS and the other ICT initiatives like Robotics education (e-Yantra), Open Source Software for Education (FOSSEE), Virtual experiments (Virtual Labs) and Learning programming (Spoken tutorial) are also experiencing very large access rates.

Economy
Mega bank consolidation of state-run banks comes into force from April 1, says RBI

Relevance IN - Prelims ( factual info related to the bank consolidation + its benefits) + Mains ( GS III economic development)
What's the NEWS

• The schemes for the merger of ten state-run banks into four lenders are coming into force from April 1
• The Reserve Bank of India announced that the branches of merging banks will operate as of the banks in which these have been amalgamated.
• The government on March 4 had notified the amalgamation schemes for 10 state owned banks into four as part of its consolidation plan to create bigger size stronger banks in the public sector.

As per the scheme
1. Oriental Bank of Commerce and United Bank of India will be merged into Punjab National Bank making the proposed entity the second largest public sector bank.
2. Syndicate Bank will merge into Canara Bank
3. Allahabad Bank into Indian Bank; and
4. Andhra and Corporation banks into Union Bank of India.

• Following the consolidation, there will be seven large public sector banks (PSBs), and five smaller ones. There were as many as 27 PSBs in 2017.

Know! the benefits of merger

• The merger will result in creation of seven large PSBs with scale and national reach
• It would help create banks with scale comparable to global banks and capable of competing effectively in India and globally.
• Consolidation would also provide impetus to amalgamated entities by increasing their ability to support larger ticket-size lending and have competitive operations by virtue of greater financial capacity.
• Last year, Dena Bank and Vijaya Bank were merged with Bank of Baroda. Prior to this, the government had merged five associate banks of SBI and Bharatiya Mahila Bank with the PSB.

Prelims Factoids
Army Launches ‘Operation Namaste' To Combat Coronavirus

Relevance IN - Prelims (about Operation Namaste)
What's the NEWS

• The Indian army has named its battle against Corona Virus ‘Operation Namaste'.

Know! more about it

• This operation has been launched by the Indian army to help the Indian government in dealing with the outbreak.
• The army has successfully carried out all the operations of the past and will also successfully carry out Operation Namaste.
• A helpline number has also been issued by the army.
• The army has set up a total of eight quarantine centres to fight the coronavirus in the country.

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