Pharma Veterans

Employee Engagement – Part 1 – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #686 Dear Colleagues!  This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #686 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans welcome sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on  WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Photo Credit: Fauxels Photo Credit: Ketut Subiyanto WORLDWIDE SITUATION Jack Welch, the legendary CEO of General Electric who turned GE around says, “There are only three measurements that tell you nearly everything you need to know about your organization’s overall performance: employee engagement, customer satisfaction, and cash flow…. It goes without saying that no company, small or large, can win over the long run without energized employees who believe in the mission and understand how to achieve it”. Employee engagement is the term routinely heard in consistently high-performi

Fulfilled Life – What and How? – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #685 Dear Colleagues!  This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #685 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans welcome sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on  WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Fulfilled life may have as many interpretations as the humans on earth. Philosophers, spiritual leaders, scholars, academics, artists, literati, scientists, and everyone else thought about this subject and have given insights which help to understand this complex subject. The major complexity arises out of the fact that we include our desires, ambitions, likes, and needs to determine what a fulfilled life means for us. The second issue is that the definition changes with changes in the circumstances. For example, a poor person would say that his/her fulfilled life would start when

Education in Pakistan – Last Part – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #684 Dear Colleagues!  This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #684 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans welcome sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on  WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Single National Curriculum - SNC The curriculum refers to what is taught in a particular grade, course, and subject. It is an interactive, system of instruction and learning with specific goals, topics, strategies, measurement, and resources. Single National Curriculum – SNC has been designed as a single vision. It is based on the concept of universal education for all. It has a single curricular structure that applies to all classes, and the medium of instruction remains the same from grade 1 to 12.  Single National Curriculum became talk of the town when it was launched in ea

Education in Pakistan – Part 4 – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #683 Dear Colleagues!  This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #683 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans welcome sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on  WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Higher Secondary/ Secondary Education in Pakistan Secondary education typically starts from grade six and goes up to grade ten or matric as is popularly known. In between, grade eight or middle level is also considered a milestone. Boards of Intermediate and Secondary Education – BISEs are now available at divisional level. For example, with the recent addition of Gujrat division, Punjab now has ten BISEs. The boards register schools in their domain, determine curricula, and conduct exams for Matric and Intermediate which is higher secondary. English medium schools mostly offer O-

Education in Pakistan – Part 3 – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #682 Dear Colleagues!  This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #682 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans welcome sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on  WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Education Structure and System in Pakistan As mentioned earlier, Education is now a provincial subject. The Ministry of Education at the federal level only coordinates with the international development partners and provides a platform to the provincial departments for exchange of information, leading to synergy and synchronization.  Public school system is still the largest provider – 62% of formal education for 12 years; grade 1 to 12. Preliminary classes like kindergarten, prep, nursery, are neither recognized for budgetary provision nor for examination. Public sector instituti

Education in Pakistan – Part 2 – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #681 Dear Colleagues!  This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #681 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans welcome sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on  WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Commitment to Education Programs and their Execution The constitution of Pakistan mandates that “The State shall provide free and compulsory education to all children of the age of five to sixteen years in such manner as may be determined by law”. The federal government never committed to this clause of constitution and with 18th amendment, this responsibility was devolved to the provinces who were neither prepared nor committed to it. Pakistan has also consistently committed to education initiatives launched internationally but has not fulfilled its responsibilities entirely. •

Education in Pakistan – Part 1 – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #680 Dear Colleagues!  This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #680 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans welcome sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on  WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Writing about education in Pakistan is a complex task. Too many factors, too many voices, too many analyses, too many reports, make it an uphill task to sift the facts from junk. It is also open to conjecture because any number of ideas may be floated and are flying around.  I shall try to walk on a thin line and rely on several sources and hard data to make this discussion worthwhile. I shall give references at the bottom which may not necessarily be in the same order, but some parts of these would have been used as source in this discussion. Yesterday, chief minister of Punjab a

Obituary – Javaid Nasir Qureshi – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #679 Dear Colleagues!  This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #679 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans welcome sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on  WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Picture taken after group meeting at Netsol Technologies. Javaid Qureshi is 6th from left. On Wednesday 10th August morning, a little before 9, Aamir Zafar called me and said that he had heard that our group member and dear friend Javaid Qureshi had passed away. He said he could not confirm it. He asked me to confirm it and then announce in the group. I waited a little to let Javaid’s office open. I called but no one picked up. Then I called one of his managers whom I knew. He confirmed and gave some details also. I then announced the news in our group of Pharma Veterans.  Pharma

Belief, Business and Corporate Culture – Last Part – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #678 Dear Colleagues!  This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #678 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans welcome sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on  WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Continued from Previous…… China does not have a religion as such, it never had one like the divine religions. Since the communist revolution in 1949, religions were officially banned. However, Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism have kept on surviving. We have talked about Confucianism already; we shall now briefly look at Taoism and Buddhism. Taoism, also spelled Daoism, refers to a constant string of cultural, intellectual, religious, and textual tradition coming from about 500 BCE to today. The founding of this tradition is attributed to a legendary person, La

Belief, Business and Corporate Culture – Part 2 – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #677 Dear Colleagues!  This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #677 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans welcome sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on  WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Continued from Previous…… Confucius said that every human relationship is a balancing act, and the one between child and parents is the most demanding yet the most deserving of attention and patience. He did not want children to be acquiescent is situations that called for judgment, at the same time, he discouraged confrontation even when the parents were clearly in the wrong.  He emphasized on the appropriateness and finesse in speech, and therefore, asked his son to learn the Odes – the earliest collection of Chinese poetry. Confucius said that learning the Odes

Belief, Business and Corporate Culture – Part 1 – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #676 Dear Colleagues!  This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #676 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans welcome sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on  WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Photo Credit: iStock Photo Credit: Charl Durand It is an interesting thesis to see how religious and cultural beliefs may affect business philosophy and practices. In Pakistan, there is increasing trend in the business community to subscribe to visibly religious practices. For example, if you happen to go to market during Ramadan in Karachi, at the beginning of the day, you will find most shopkeepers reciting Qura’an. This is the opening of the day. During Ramadan, the charity increases manifold; rations are distributed to the poor, Sehar and Iftar meals are offer

COVID19 Updates – Part 2 – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #675 Dear Colleagues!  This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #675 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans welcome sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on  WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Photo Credit: CDC Photo Credit: Cottonbro These posts are based on a July 28, 2022, article and the WHO living guidelines. The links appear at the end. Continued from Previous…… Paxlovid and other COVID19 therapeutics are widely available only in high-income countries. For example, in the United States, supply is more than demand, but in low-income countries, the access to these options is either severely restricted or altogether absent. The picture is the same as was seen in the case of COVID19 vaccines; the low-income countries were scrambling for vaccines while high-income countries