TNPSC Current Affairs March 05, 2020

www.tnpsc.academy – TNPSC Current Affairs March 05, 2020 (05/03/2020)

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Topic: Latest Diary of Events

World University Rankings by Subject 2020

QS (Quacquarelli Symonds) has released the World University Rankings by Subject 2020.

Background:

To produce the QS World University Rankings by subject area for this year, QS analysed over 22 million papers, producing close to 200 million citations.

1,368 institutions have been ranked across 48 subjects in 5 broad categories across 159 locations, which reflects the scale behind this internationally benchmarked undertaking to produce these subject rankings.

5 categories are:

Arts and humanities.

Engineering and technology.

Life sciences and medicine.

Natural sciences.

Social sciences and management.

Performance of Indian Institutions:

Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay and IIT Delhi have secured 44th and 47th positions respectively in Engineering and Technology category.

Top 100: Other Indian technological and engineering institutes like IIT Kharagpur (86), IIT Madras (88) and IIT Kanpur (96) found their places in top 100 of this category.

However, engineering and technology was the only major subject group where Indian institutions were able to crack the elite top 100 tier.

Overall, 12 institutions from the country were ranked in the top 500 in this category alone.

In the Natural Sciences category, three Indian institutions made it to the top 200: IIT-Bombay at 108th rank, closely followed by the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore at the 111th position, while IIT-Madras scraped in at the 195th rank.

Jawaharlal Nehru University remained the country’s top institution in the Arts and Humanities category, with a global ranking of 162, followed at a distance by Delhi University at 231.

Delhi University topped the Social Sciences and Management category, with a global ranking of 160, followed by IIT-Delhi at 183.

There are no Indian institutions in the world’s top 200 when it comes to Life Sciences and Medicine. The top institution in the country is the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, which had a global ranking of 231.

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Topic: Current socio-economic issues

Merger of Banks

The government has approved a scheme for the amalgamation of 10 state-owned banks into four. After the process is complete, India will have 12 PSBs instead of 27 back in 2017.

New mergers include:

Punjab National Bank, Oriental Bank of Commerce and United Bank of India will combine to form the nation’s second-largest lender.

Canara Bank and Syndicate Bank will merge.

Union Bank of India will amalgamate with Andhra Bank and Corporation Bank.

Indian Bank will merge with Allahabad Bank.

Way ahead:

Merger is a good idea. However, this should be carried out with right banks for the right reasons. Merger is also tricky given the huge challenges banks face, including the bad loan problem that has plunged many public sector banks in an unprecedented crisis.

Committees in this regard:

Narasimham committee (1991 and 1998) suggested merger of strong banks both in public sector and even with the developmental financial institutions and NBFCs.

Khan committee in 1997 stressed the need for harmonization of roles of commercial banks and the financial institutions.

Verma committee pointed out that consolidation will lead to pooling of strengths and lead to overall reduction in cost of operations.

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Topic: Profile of States

All Women Bench

The Chief Justice of Madras High Court Amreshwar Pratap Sahi has made oncoming International Women’s Day this year a memorable by constituting its first-ever all-women Full Bench.

Bench consists of 3 judges namely Justices Pushpa Sathyanarayana, Anita Sumanth and P.T. Asha.

About a year ago, the Madras High Court had the distinction of having had the highest number of 11 women judges.