Relevance IN - Prelims ( about Currency Swap Agreement ) + Mains ( GS III Economic development + GS II Bilateral relations)
What' the News

• India is working with the United States to secure a dollar swap line that would help in better management of its external account and provide extra cushion in the event of an abrupt outflow of funds, according to banking industry and government sources.

• Forex reserves/assets (also called foreign exchange assets) are assets held on reserve by a central bank in foreign currencies. These may include foreign currencies, bonds, treasury bills and other government securities. These are held to ensure that a central bank has enough funds if its national currency weakens/ devalues rapidly.
• A currency swap between the two countries is an agreement to exchange currencies with predetermined terms and conditions. The parties agree to swap back these quantities of their two currencies at a specified date in the future, which is the next day or as far ahead as three months, using the same exchange rate as in the first transaction.
• These swap operations carry no exchange rate or other market risks as transaction terms are set in advance. Central banks and Governments engage in currency swaps with foreign counterparts to meet short term foreign exchange liquidity requirements or to ensure adequate foreign currency to avoid Balance of Payments (BOP) crisis till longer arrangements can be made.
• In a dollar swap arrangement, a kind of currency swap, the US Fed provides dollars to a foreign central bank (Say, RBI), which, at the same time, provides the equivalent funds in its currency (here, Indian Rupees) to the Fed, based on the market exchange rate at the time of the transaction.
• In 2019, India signed a $75 billion bilateral currency swap line agreement with Japan, which has the second largest dollar reserves after China. This facility provides India with the flexibility to use these reserves at any time in order to maintain an appropriate level of balance of payments or short-term liquidity. The Reserve Bank of India also offers similar swap lines to central banks in the SAARC region within a total corpus of $2 billion.

• In roughly a month, India's foreign exchange reserves have fallen by nearly $13 billion - from an all-time high of $487.23 billion on March 6 to $474.66 billion as of April 3, as per the latest data reported by the RBI.
• Despite the slump in global crude oil prices and reduction in imports due to the pandemic outbreak, a sharp outflow of funds resulting from foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) looking for safer havens amidst the current global uncertainty, has pulled down India's foreign exchange reserves.
• On March 19, 2020, the Fed opened temporary swap arrangements with the central banks of Australia, Brazil, Denmark, South Korea, Mexico, Norway, New Zealand, Singapore, and Sweden, to be in place for at least six months for a combined $450 billion.
• The Fed already has permanent swap arrangements with the Bank of Canada, the Bank of England, the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan, and the Swiss National Bank. Other large economies including India, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and South Africa - all part of the G-20 grouping - currently do not have a currency swap line with the US.

• With the high level of Forex available with India at present, it is largely expected to tide over any challenge posed by continued outflows of funds from the markets. However, a swap line with the US Federal Reserve provides additional comfort to the forex markets.
• Foreign institutional investors (FIIs) have been large sellers in the Indian equity and debt markets in March and April so far, as concerns over the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic has hit investor sentiment.
• Even as the stock markets have seen a pullback from earlier low levels, there is apprehension that the economic impact of COVID-19 will last for a significant length of time, and there is unlikely to be any V-shaped recovery in the economy or in the financial markets.
• This means that the government and the RBI cannot lower their guard on the management of the economy and the external account.

What's the NEWS

• Union Government has created an online data pool on https://covidwarriors.gov.in of doctors including AYUSH doctors, nurses and other health care professionals, volunteers from NYKs, NCC NSS, PMGKVY, ex Servicemen etc for use by the ground level administration at state, district or municipal levels.

Know! more about online data pool dashboard and its role

• A Dashboard master database of details of Healthcare Professionals and Volunteers, has been made operational.
• It contains state wise and district wise availability of the large pool of human resources from various groups alongwith contact details of the nodal officers.
• The dashboard is available for use by various authorities to prepare Crisis Management/Contingency Plans based on the available manpower, in coordination with nodal officers for each group.
• This database can also be used to utilise the services of volunteers for enforcing social distancing at banks, ration shops, mandis and for providing help to elderly, divyang and orphanages.
• This will also help States/UTs to move human resources from one location to the other for their utilisation.

Integrated Government Online Training(iGOT) portal

• The government also calls for use of iGOT online training modules mounted on a especial digital platform-Integrated Government Online Training(iGOT) portal(https://igot.gov.in) for training and capacity building of doctors, nurses, paramedics, hygiene workers, technicians, AYUSH doctors and staff, other frontline workers and volunteers.
• This platform provides anytime onsite delivery of training material/modules through any device(mobile/laptop/desktop).

Know! more about iGOT platform

• The Department of Personnel and Training, has announced the launch of a learning platform (https://igot.gov.in)
• The platform is called iGOT - Integrated Government Online Training and is set to be hosted on the Human Resources Development Ministry's DIKSHA platform.
• The iGOT platform delivers curated, role-specific content, to each learner at their place of work or home and to any device of their choice.

Know! about DIKSHA platform

• National Teacher Platform (NTP) branded as "Diksha" is an initiative of the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India.
• It is a state-of-the-art platform built to host Open Educational Resources (OER) and tools for Teachers in Schools, Teacher Educators in Teacher Education Institutes (TEIs) and Student Teachers in TEIs.
• It is built considering the whole teacher's life cycle - from the time student teachers enroll in TEIs to after they retire as teachers.

NTP envisages to provide:

• Teacher training courses (example - training on learning outcomes, CCE, etc.)
• Teaching resources such as lesson plans, concept videos, worksheets, mapped to curriculum
• Assessments for teachers, to find out their strengths and areas of improvement

Space Awareness
NASA will launch astronauts from US soil for the first time in nearly a decade, with help from SpaceX

Relevance IN - Prelims ( about Demo-2 mission + about CREW-1 + about the Commercial Crew Program + about ISS + Mains ( GS III awareness in the field of space)
What's the NEWS

• Demo-2 will launch two NASA astronauts to the International Space Station for the first time since the end of the Space Shuttle program nearly a decade ago.

Know! more about the Demo-2 mission

• NASA and SpaceX are targeting May 27 for the launch of Demo-2, the first launch of NASA astronauts from the U.S. since 2011 and the first crewed launch for Elon Musk's space company.
• As its name implies, Demo-2 will be the second time SpaceX launches its Crew Dragon capsule to the International Space Station. But, unlike Demo-1 last year, this time two astronauts will be on board.
• NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley will fly on the SpaceX spacecraft as part of the US space agency's Commercial Crew Programme, heralding a new era of human spaceflight.
• The Demo-2 mission will be the final major step before NASA's Commercial Crew Program certifies Crew Dragon for operational, long-duration missions to the space station.

Know! about Crew-1

• The plan is to bring Behnken and Hurley back from the space station after about two or three months.
• About a month after they return, NASA and SpaceX will launch Crew-1, which the agency considers to be Crew Dragon's "first operational" flight. Crew-1 will mark the official start of SpaceX flying astronauts on regular missions to the ISS.

Know! about the Commercial Crew Program

• The Commercial Crew Program is a human spaceflight program that is funded by the U.S. government and administered by NASA through which private vendors are to develop and operate crew vehicles to carry US and international astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS).

Know! about ISS

• The International Space Station (ISS) is a space station (habitable artificial satellite) in low Earth orbit.
• The ISS programme is a joint project between five participating space agencies: NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), JAXA (Japan), ESA (Europe), and CSA (Canada).
• The ownership and use of the space station is established by intergovernmental treaties and agreements.
• The ISS serves as a microgravity and space environment research laboratory in which crew members conduct experiments in biology, human biology, physics, astronomy, meteorology, and other fields.

Human Resource Development
SWAYAM and SWAYAM Prabha
Relevance IN - Prelims (steps taken by the government to promote online education) + Mains ( GS II Issues relating to development and management of Social Sector/Services relating to Health, Education, Human Resources.)
What's the NEWS

• The Human Resource Development Ministry held a detailed review of the National online education platform SWAYAM and the 32 DTH Television Education Channels SWAYAM PRABHA
• In the lockdown condition there has been a tremendous increase in demand and the usage of SWAYAM Courses and SWAYAM PRABHA videos.

SWAYAM (steps taken to promote online education)

• 1902 courses are available currently in SWAYAM, which have been offered to 1.56 cr. students since launch.
• SWAYAM 2.0 also supports launch of Online degree programmes.
• It was decided that all the 1900 SWAYAM Courses and 60000 SWAYAM PRABHA videos would be translated into ten regional languages and made available to the students so that more benefit can be derived from the same.

SWAYAM Prabha(steps taken to promote online education)

• The SWAYAM PRABHA is a group of 32 DTH channels devoted to telecasting of high-quality educational programmes on 24X7 basis using the GSAT-15 satellite.
• Every day, there will be new content for at least (4) hours which would be repeated 5 more times in a day, allowing the students to choose the time of their convenience.
  
  

The following decisions were taken:

• It was decided to enrich the content in SWAYAM PRABHA by collecting content from who so ever willing to contribute the same under Vidya Daan Programme.
• The video content on SWAYAM Prabha shall be mapped to curriculum, and the academic calendar
• For the translation of content of four IIT-PAL channels, CBSE, NIOS shall provide all assistance to IIT-Delhi.

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