Excellence by Saikat Sir: 11/17/20

CURRENT AFFAIRS: DAYS

International Day for Tolerance is marked on November 16.
The day is being celebrated ever since the United Nations marked the year of Tolerance in 1995. The date of November 16 was chosen as it is the anniversary of UNESCO’s Declaration of Principles on Tolerance.
The main aim behind starting this day was to make educational institutions and people at large believe that tolerance is an integral part of society.

The Finance Ministry has given its first ever national database of migrant labour to provide a platform for workers and employers, and for the government to implement specific programmes for such labourers.
The Ministry of Labour & Employment has envisaged development of a ‘National Database of Unorganised Workers’ (NDUW) seeded with
The project will enrol all unorganised workers, including migrant workers.
Total cost is expected around₹650 crore.
Besides job opportunities, such a database will help migrant labour get the benefit of government schemes. It will help workers to share information about his/her skill which, in turn, will make it easy for employers to find suitable person
Such a database can be used in many ways, apart from being a platform for employer and potential employee. It can be helpful in providing welfare schemes or implementing social security initiatives.
Also, the movement of labour can be tracked in a situation like a Covid-induced lockdown so they can be assisted when in desperation.

Indian students contributed $7.6 billion to the US economy in the academic year 2019-20, even though there was a 4.4 per cent drop in the total number of Indian students, according to a report.
China remained the largest source of international students in the US, with the number of Chinese students in the country increasing for the 16th consecutive year. There were over 372,000 Chinese students during 2019-20 year, stated the report “Opens Doors 2020.”
India remained the second largest source of international students, despite the 4.4 per cent decline to 193,124 students, it stated.
According to the report, released by the US Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and the Institute of International Education (IIE), for the fifth consecutive year the United States hosted more than 1 million international students (1,075,496) in an academic year.
Despite a slight decline (1.8 per cent) in the number of international students during the academic year, this group still represents 5.5 per cent of all students in US higher education system.
According to the US Department of Commerce, international students contributed $44 billion to the US economy in 2019, including $7,69 billion from Indian students.

State-run Punjab National Bank stated the RBI has imposed a penalty of Rs 1 crore on it for contravention of the Payment and Settlement Systems Act.
“RBI has observed that the Bank was operating a bilateral ATM sharing arrangement with Druk PNB Bank Ltd, Bhutan, (international subsidiary of the Bank), since April, 2010 without the prior approval / authorisation from RBI,” it stated.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) imposed the Rs 1 crore penalty for “contravention of the nature referred to in Section 26 (6) of the Payment and Settlement Systems Act, 2007 (PSS Act)”, it added. PNB’s shares closed at Rs 29.50 a piece on BSE, up 1.37 percent.

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