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Contents Free Vaccines and India's Humanitarian Diplomacy ---------------------- 1 Topics of the Month -------------------------------------------------------- 4 Economy -------------------------------------------------------- 14 RBI in News -------------------------------------------------------- 14 SBI in News --------------------------------------------------------- 15 Other Banks in News ------------------------------------------------ 15 Financial News ------------------------------------------------ 18 Rating and Survey ------------------------------------------------ 20 Loan and Agreement ------------------------------------------------ 20 MOU and Agreement ------------------------------------------------ 21 Committee and Its Head -------------------------------------------------------- 24 State News -------------------------------------------------------- 25 National -------------------------------------------------------- 37 International -------------------------------------------------------- 45 Bilateral -------------------------------------------------------- 48 International and National Summits --------------------------------------- 50 Ranking and Index -------------------------------------------------------- 53 Award -------------------------------------------------------- 54 Person in News/Newly Appointed -------------------------------------------- 56 Sports -------------------------------------------------------- 59 Science and Technology -------------------------------------------------------- 62 Defence -------------------------------------------------------- 64 Important Days -------------------------------------------------------- 66 Book and Author -------------------------------------------------------- 67 Obituary -------------------------------------------------------- 68 Miscellaneous -------------------------------------------------------- 69 MAGAZINE FOR THE MONTH OF MARCH – 2021 FREE VACCINES and INDIA'S HUMANITARIAN DIPLOMACY Page | 1 MAGAZINE FOR THE MONTH OF MARCH – 2021 As per health ministry data showed, as many as 1.8 crore people have received vaccine doses so far. Of these 68,53,083 are healthcare workers who received first dose, and 31,41,371 healthcare workers got their second. As many as 60,90,931 frontline workers received the first dose and 67,297 frontline workers got the second dose. Meanwhile, 2,35,901 beneficiaries aged more than 45 years with specific co-morbidities and 16,16,920 beneficiaries aged more than 60 years took their first Covid-19 shots. The vaccination pace increased in last week of February after Prime Minister Narendra Modi kicked off an expansion of the drive to include the elderly and those aged 45-59 suffering from medical conditions. While organising a COVID-19 vaccine roll-out, the Indian government announced an elaborate ‘vaccine diplomacy’ strategy of providing vaccines to most of its neighbours and other developing countries. For over two decades, India has earned a reputation for being the ‘pharmacy of the world’ thanks to its strong generic pharmaceutical industry, which supplies affordable and quality medicines to the global market. Medicine exports from India have grown from around US$1 billion at the turn of the century to over US$20 billion in 2019–20. Indian companies made critical interventions during the HIV/AIDS pandemic by supplying affordable antiretroviral medicines to African countries, where major pharmaceutical producers were demanding excessively high prices. After the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria took shape as a multi- stakeholder initiative to reduce the burden of these diseases, India’s generic pharmaceutical industry emerged as one of the largest suppliers. India has emerged as a major supplier of COVID-19 vaccines. India has a partnership with the Serum Institute of India (SII), the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer by number of doses. In June 2020, SII entered into a licensing agreement with British-Swedish biopharmaceutical company, AstraZeneca, to supply one billion doses of the Oxford University COVID- 19 vaccine to middle- and-low- income countries, including India. SII currently supplies its vaccine, Covishield, to the Indian government. Prior to this, another Indian biopharmaceutical company, Bharat Biotech International Limited, together with the Indian Council of Medical Research, began collaboratively developing a COVID-19 vaccine, ‘Covaxin’. Large parts of the world are still reeling from the spread of the coronavirus, with renewed lockdowns in effect in many places. With every stricken country focused on tackling its COVID-19 crisis, there is little international generosity in donating large quantities of medicines or vaccines when demand for them is sky-high.So, when India in recent days delivered millions of COVID-19 vaccines as gifts to countries in the Indian Ocean region, it attracted international attention. India’s neighbours, Bangladesh, Bhutan, the Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, will benefit from vaccine supplies as part of India’s development cooperation initiative. Afghanistan, the Seychelles, Myanmar and Mauritius are also expected to be beneficiaries. In South Asia, where China’s presence has grown in recent years, India’s ‘vaccine diplomacy’ could help to even out the playing field. India has agreed to supply 10 million vaccine doses to Africa and one million to UN health workers under the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) facility coordinated by the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations (GAVI). Several other countries, including Mongolia, Oman, the Philippines, Bahrain, and the Dominican Republic could also be included in India’s ‘vaccine assistance’ program. India is using its soft power to assist developing countries, a role that it has increasingly been playing as a development partner. Around 40 years ago in the 1980s, India and China were almost on the same level in terms of economy, now the Chinese economy is approximately five times the size of the Indian economy. But when it comes to credibility, India essentially stands far ahead of its neighbour. Vaccine diplomacy is the latest evidence in which India has truly outraced China and reliability is a big factor behind it. How India beat China in vaccine diplomacy? India’s free-vaccine diplomacy, however, has been driven by more than altruism. There are geopolitical considerations at play, including building goodwill and influence and countering China’s growing strategic 2 | Page MAGAZINE FOR THE MONTH OF MARCH – 2021 footprint in the Indian Ocean region. Supplying free vaccines to combat a raging pandemic also seems a better choice for New Delhi than providing direct aid in another form. China had promised around 3.9 million free vaccines to the world, but India has already provided around 6.8 million free vaccines to various countries. Not only that, for the COVAX initiative of the World Health Organisation - launched to get vaccines for the poorer countries - China assured 10 million doses of vaccines, but the first dispatch of 6 lakh vaccines was made by India . What makes the contrast sharper is that the pandemic has hit India more severely in comparison to China, killing over 157,000 people here, while the Chinese official toll stands at 4,636. Plus, China claims to have contained the spread of coronavirus within three months of its outbreak, while the second wave Covid-19 looms in India. Economically, due to lockdowns, the pandemic had severe negative impacts worldwide and India went into recession after 25 years, but China not only managed to avoid the decline but reported a 2.1% growth in GDP in 2020. To top it all, China claimed to be the first country to develop vaccines against Covid-19 and rollout the inoculation drive. But it has achieved only four-fifths of its immunisation target reportedly. Even though, China has four vaccines now to inoculate its approximately 1.4 billion population. India built trust, China created confusion China failed to infuse confidence in its citizens because the vaccine producers Sinopharm, Sinovac and Cansino kept their trial data under wraps. The lower efficacy rate of Chinese vaccines has further damaged their credibility. It is important to note that the Chinese vaccines are still under the WHO regulatory evaluation while the Serum Institute of India's Covishield vaccine has already been approved by the international body. This is how India has built substantial trust to have exported over 33 million vaccine shots to different countries (apart from the number of free vaccines). India didn't disappoint even Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau when he sought help from PM Modi. In the race for political influence in the developing world, two Asian giants, India and China, have always been competing with each other. But vaccine diplomacy, based on well-founded trust, has distinctly given India an edge over China. With the Serum Institute of India being the largest vaccine manufacturer in the world, India always had this lead but it refused to resort to vaccine nationalism and came to the world's rescue when the world needed it. Page | 3 MAGAZINE FOR THE MONTH OF MARCH – 2021 ATAL BIMIT VYAKTI 1 KALYAN YOJANA (ABVKY) The Ministry of Labour and Employment announced Atal Bimit Vyakti Kalyan Yojana to financially support Insured Person (IP) who lost their jobs and were covered under the Employees' State Insurance Act, 1948. This scheme has been approved by the Employees’ State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) that aims to benefit its subscribers, who are