Discourse on Madrassah Education Reform in Pakistan: Challenges to State Narrative and its Implications

It is generally perceived that Madrassah produce extremism which possesses a threat to the peace and security of the state and to the world as well. Government along with local and International community wants to eradicate extremism and terrorism through reforming Madrassah education. The purpose of current study is to answer the question “why attempts of Madrassah reforms were unfruitful”? By focusing on it, study is divided into three phase such as to find out; different narrative on Madrassah reform, potential barriers in the way of reform and skepticisms associated with reformist policy. The main objective of current study is to understand the problems regarding Madrassah reform through realistic approach by addressing main question what are the challenges in developing alternative narrative on Madrassah reforms and its implications? The main investigation has three driving questions that what Madrassah reform means in point of view of different actors? What are main obstacles in the process of reform? And what are skepticisms about reform? In this qualitative study stakeholder interviews have been conducted. Results of the study indicates that Government narrative with regards to Madrassah education reform is to bring them into mainstream whereas religious community think that there are hidden agendas behind the modernization of Madrassahs. They viewed Madrassahs reforms to dilute the attention of religious sector from religious education to western education. Similarly, it viewed that changes in curricula, financial control, regulatory change, and vested interest are the main hurdles in the way of reform.

Stability Estimates for the Elliptic and Parabolic Obstacle Problems

Stability of the solution of the multidimensional unilateral obstacle problem with respect to the variations of the coefficients of the corresponding second order partial differential operator is studied in the present thesis. A H ̈lder type stability estimate in the second order Sobolev space of functions is o established for the solution of the elliptic obstacle problem. Rodrigues ([25, 1987]) proved the stability result with respect to bounded external force functions under the nondegeneracy condition. We generalize this result to the case of arbitrary functions belonging to the space Lp (D), p ≥ 2. Further parabolic obstacle problem is studied with different principal parts in the parabolic differential operator and applied to the American put option problem with various local volatility functions. The estimate of the area between the early exercise boundaries through the uniform distance between the local volatility functions is obtained.