By Raffique Shah
September 12, 2026

To hear the stories being told from four cardinal points of the globe we call our world is to listen to or to read—or worse, experience—the common global issue of pharmaceutical failures. I’m not referring to failures in the sense of malpractice or drug side effects—well, at least that’s not what I’m concentrating on. My problem, as I am sure many others out there will have experienced, is the constant non-availability followed by price gouging of drugs necessary to treat ailments or conditions, if you will, that many people have absolutely no control over.
Continue reading No medicine, no excuses →

By Raffique Shah
September 06, 2026

I came from a family with a literate mother and a semi-literate father, both of whom understood the importance of their children getting a sound education. My siblings and I were not all cut out for the academic path, but we did the best we could with the abilities we had, I being the only one who received a tertiary education at that time back in the 1960s-1970s.

Today, though, all of our children have received some sort of tertiary education, and most of them are now employed alongside their peers in various sectors throughout the country. I bring this up because come tomorrow, the nation’s newest school year will open and some children will be going to school for the very first time, while others will be picking up where they left off the last academic year, and yet others will be either dropping out or graduating, never to return to academics again in their lifetime.
Continue reading Illiteracy in the age of AI →