Harmony and Peace Education in Pakistan: Focus on Pctb Textbooks of History and Pakistan Studies

Textbooks produce specific minds so are believed the best way to promote peace and harmony in a society. Policymakers draw ideological lines for specific goals and educate the coming generations through the contents of the textbooks. Whatever agenda a nation has, peace and social harmony cannot be compromised so syllabi mean to promote nationalism along with integration. Although history and social studies textbooks address coexistence and tolerance but even then many writers share their reservations about some points. K K Aziz (1993) in Pakistan castigated the governments and the textbook authors on ‘distortion’ of the historical events and deleting important segments of history from the syllabi. Mariam Chughtai shared her reservation regarding the textbooks being published in Pakistan. Romila Thapar in India raised objections against the BJP government’s effort of ‘religionising the syllabi’ and tried her best to introduce non-communal approach based on social harmony in the textbooks while writing history books but her effort remained a mere desire because the ‘religiously’ extremist political party occupying the main corridor of the national government and having no compatibility with her ideas refused to accept the undisputed historical facts. Dr. Mubarak Ali opined while writing on the textbooks that ‘defective textbooks create a defective mindset. Ideology limits people from acquiring new knowledge in order to understand the fast changing world’ (Dawn, April 16, 2016). ‘National History’ reflects national point of view to produce a generation who represents some specific land, culture, religion, political ideology, art and social ethics. Children are taught to grow with their own culture, religion and social norms. This study finds that syllabus of the subjects of History and Pakistan Studies produced by the Punjab Curriculum and Textbook Board (PCTB) aims at educating the ‘national interpretation of history along with respect for other religious groups’ to the posterity therefore no gaps seem in the textbooks of History and Pakistan Studies. Criticism arises mostly on the old textbooks while the PCTB had revised the textbooks massively and all the historical periods including Indus Valley Civilization, ancient India, Sikh rule, etc. Are being taught at the school and college level. The ‘history textbook’ is not a ‘history’ rather it offers interpretation of the historical events. This article further pinpoints some issues such as communal interpretations in the British India, space in the textbooks, administrative, social, political and religious narrations, and the undeniable position on nationalism and patriotism which cannot be overlooked. The textbooks are playing their role in promoting social harmony and this policy has resulted in a coexistence, tolerance and peace in the society.

Implementation of Quality Management Techniques to Improve the Quality of Yarn

Quality management has been emerged with promising organizational performance outcomes around the business world and has brought healthy prospective for the modern era business organizations to meet the challenge of continuous quality improvement to satisfy the customer demands. Organizations are forced to ensure the quality of their products and services to meet the challenges posed by the competition existing in the markets around the globe, growing customers’ awareness of market development, ever- escalating quality demands from customers, and the urge of organizations to strive for winning the competitive edge at marketplace. This dissertation provides the insight of quality management status of cotton yarn industry of Pakistan by addressing the issue of quality management implementation in the industry and its performance outcomes. This dissertation is meant to evaluate that whether the quality management programs, which proved very effective in improving organizational performance in the advanced countries, could be successful in the organizations belong to developing country like Pakistan. The existing literature of quality management is mostly based on research performed in advanced countries, to contribute in the body of knowledge of quality management this study is conducted in the cotton yarn industry of Pakistan. The organizational culture, management style, human resources and the managerial perspectives are considered critical factors in defining the success or failure of the quality management programs. Hence, it is worthwhile to appraise the effect of quality management practices in improving the quality of yarn and organizational performance in context of cotton yarn industry of Pakistan, which is presumably characterized with a specific organizational culture, management style, human resources, and managerial perspectives. Within this research objective, the research problem was established as “What level of Quality management implementation is achieved by cotton yarn industry of Pakistan, and how much quality management is effective in improving quality of cotton yarn industry?” To address the main research problem, four research activities were planned. The first research activity was to have exhaustive hypothetical and pragmatic knowledge about the concepts, principals, practices, and the issues related to quality management implementation in organizational context. This research activity was imperative to discover quality management approaches to develop a research structure to evaluate the level of implementation of quality management techniques by the cotton yarn industry of Pakistan. The second research activity was to explore the empirical interrelationship of quality management practices implemented in organizational context of the cotton yarn industry of Pakistan. The third research activity was to identify the relationship of quality management techniques with the performance measures in the organizational perspectives of cotton yarn industry of Pakistan. The fourth research activity was to evaluate the effect of implementation of quality management techniques on organizational performance and quality improvement of cotton yarn. To comply with these research activities, main research problem was re- defined into four sub-questions vii. What level of adoption of quality management techniques is achieved by the cotton yarn industry of Pakistan? ii. How do quality management techniques interrelated in the work environment of the cotton yarn industry of Pakistan? iii. How does implementation of quality management techniques linked with the performance measures of cotton yarn industry of Pakistan? iv. What effect implementation of quality management techniques has observed on the quality of yarn in the cotton yarn industry of Pakistan? In addressing research question 1, the findings of this research show that cotton yarn industry of Pakistan has implemented quality management techniques with a moderate level, and quality management programs are receiving positive response from the industry. In addressing research question 2, the findings of this research show that in the organizational environment of cotton yarn industry of Pakistan, all the quality management techniques have significant positive correlation with each other, except the practice of changing the suppliers for their failure in maintaining the promised quality level. In addressing research question 3, the findings of this research show that implementation of quality techniques is positively linked with the organizational performance measures, except the practice of changing the suppliers for their failure in achieving and maintaining the minimum level of quality, that has negative effect on performance measures. In addressing research question 4, the finding of this research show that in the in context of cotton yarn industry of Pakistan, the implementation of quality management techniques proved to have a significant positive impact on profitability, market share, sale volume, reduction in rejection rate, and organizational performance.