Heat pollution and Earthquakes – Why the world needs to have broader conversations about climate change

According to NASA website, “Global warming is the long-term heating of Earth’s surface observed since the pre-industrial period (between 1850 and 1900) due to human activities, primarily fossil fuel burning, which increases heat-trapping greenhouse gas levels in Earth’s atmosphere.”

NASA’s definition of global warming is misleading for a very specific reason. It is placing the primary responsibility of global warming on fossil fuel burning. While it is true that releasing trapped carbon in fossils back into the atmosphere has led to the greenhouse effect and increase in Earth’s surface temperature, global warming has to be understood from a much larger perspective.

From the smallest microorganisms to the blue whales, every living being generates and emits heat from its body. We consume food, break it down for providing us energy and release that energy as heat into our surroundings when we do our activities. In order to understand Earth’s surface temperature, we have to first select areas in all geographic locations, measure heat generated by every organism except humans in those areas and extrapolate the results to find out the total heat generated by all animals except humans over a specific period of time. There is a good reason to exclude humans from this exercise.

Except the animals that live in packs, all other animals try to keep distance from their own kind and from other animals except during breeding time. Being territorial about food is one reason and the other reason is, as population density increases, heat released from their bodies become amplified. Understanding body heat is easy. In a room cooled by A/c, the room will be moderately cold when there are more number of people and as more people leave the room the remaining people will start feeling colder. Also, greater population density results in faster spreading of diseases. Predator-prey relationships and diseases are two major ways how nature enforces population control on animals. So measuring the population of each animal and the amount of heat released from the body of each animal would give a good account of how much heat animals contribute towards Earth’s surface temperature. This is another reason why population control in nature is important because population control will ensure heat released from the body of animals will not significantly add to Earth’s surface temperature.

We have not only broken all laws of nature we have done lot more things that are mind boggling and incomprehensible. Earth is 70% water and 30% land of which 10-15% land is habitable. 8 billion and growing human population is jostling to live in this small percentage of land. Our perpetually increasing population density is amplifying all our body heat and to add to this, any disease could manifest into an epidemic and pandemic in no time. But it is not just our body heat that is contributing to Earth’s surface temperature. Every single creation of ours, from the smallest light bulbs to mobile phones to the largest aircrafts and rockets are burning fuel and generating heat. We are not just polluting Earth with heat generated from carbon emission, we are also creating heat from sound, light, breeding different types of cattle and poultry for our dietary needs and many more types of pollution and every type of pollution is generating copious amounts of heat all of which adds to Earth’s surface temperature. Simply put, the most significant and largest pollutant we are creating is heat.

To add to all of this, we are cutting down trees and destroying forests. Trees absorb harmful rays from the Sun and when they are gone, those harmful rays also end up heating Earth. So there are two ways in which Earth is getting heated now. Earth is getting bombarded by more harmful rays from the Sun and by the increase in Earth’s surface temperature and we are contributing significantly in both.

When we speak about climate change we have to take all of these into account. In our rich history, there is a great example of climate change if our population decreased suddenly and consequently, forest grows back. The Spanish Inquisition in the Americas in the 16th century eradicated 90% of the local population due to wars, famines and epidemics and forests grew back in the millions of hectares of human settlement areas. Research points to a global temperature drop in the 17th century which adversely affected Europe resulting in famine and epidemics and this is being correlated with what had happened in the Americas a century earlier.

All conversations about climate change largely revolve around carbon emission and the need for carbon neutrality. This is not just a very narrow way of looking at global warming but also a misleading one as well. Our exploding population and everything we are creating are all adding to global warming. Population control is no longer the solution. If human species has to survive, human depopulation is the only way. Most of us will have to die for some of us to survive. Otherwise, receding forests and increasing human population will increase Earth’s temperature to a point where Earth will become uninhabitable. But, long before it goes that bad, something else will happen. There is a natural disaster that will happen if Earth gets heated up like it is getting now – Earthquakes. Oceans when heated up will cause underwater earthquakes resulting in tsunami. There are ancient tribes that believe the world has been destroyed completely 3 times in the past and the 4th one is imminent which will be caused by cataclysmic earthquakes.

We need broader conversations about climate change caused by all the heat created by us and the consequences leading to global awareness programs with the clear message that Earth is already overloaded with us and can take no more of us. Without this, all conversations are useless.

Understanding Business Objectives In The Chaos Of Corporate Layoffs

News of layoffs from Silicon Valley heavyweights and the startup world are grabbing headlines and eyeballs each day now. Professional social media platform LinkedIn is inundated with posts from laid off employees expressing anguish at the way they were locked out of company premises and office computer networks abruptly. There are several reasons for what has been happening but it would be better understood by first looking at business fundamentals and other underlying factors.

All companies aspire to grow their revenue and profit margins Year-On-Year (YOY) and this is the mandate of their top executives. Business strategies are created for both revenue generation and cost saving (money saved is money created) based on market analysis and macroeconomic conditions. This results in the initiation of projects which when executed results in the development of products, services, etc which can either be commercialized and monetized to generate revenue or used internally to increase efficiency and thereby reduce cost to companies. Bigger companies will have multiple projects and startups will be mostly working on developing a single product/service. Now, there are business evaluation methods (NPV, IRR) to establish if a project can be successful but there can be hurdles during project execution, introduction of similar products/services and other market changes, changes in macroeconomic conditions and availability of funds that can fail the project and failure of companies in case of startups.

There is a business evaluation model called PEST which is used to analyze macroeconomic conditions to determine the success or failure of a business initiative. PEST stands for Political-Economic-Social-Technological. PEST was later extended to PESTEL to include Ecological and Legal factors. Ecological can be largely divided into two factors – natural disasters and diseases. Companies have traditionally ignored ecological factors during business evaluations. The first time I came across ecological factor becoming relevant was after the devastating Mumbai flood in 2005. A client that had outsourced its IT operations to a service provider based out of Mumbai asked for a disaster recovery (DR) team to be set up in Bangalore. But diseases were completely ignored.

When the COVID pandemic struck in 2020 and countries went into lockdown, supply chains got massively disrupted. Companies were forced to modify their strategies and operations with immediate effect or close down. As the lockdowns extended, many of the ongoing projects became reduntant temporarily while new business opportunities started coming to the fore. Online home delivery and educational platforms popped up and thrived. Hiring increased substantially to implement and support new projects. It was evident that lockdowns had to end or would cripple economies of countries but where companies seem to have grossly mistaken is in their assumption that businesses would not or take a long time to return to pre-covid situation. My understanding is, if businesses had done their evaluation by considering ecological factors and specifically the factor of diseases and understood the implications, the world would not have had to go through what it had to for two years of the pandemic.

It is well known that majority of projects initiated by companies and majority of startups fail. Companies try to absorb employees in failed projects into other projects whereas startups are left with no option but to let go off their employees. But organizational consolidation amid fears of impending economic recession, disruption caused by Russia-Ukraine conflict and rising inflation and interest rates have resulted in the layoffs we are seeing now. There are different categories of employees that have been impacted now.

1) Employees on bench – Employees who are not assigned to projects or are out of projects and yet to get new projects are assigned to bench where they are trained on new technologies and topics while they continue to receive their monthly salaries. Normal practice is, most employees on bench get assigned to new projects and those who don’t are let go after a specific period of time. When layoffs due to consolidation is initiated, bench employees are the first ones to be affected.

2) New/recent joiners – When projects slow down or become redundant, new/recent joiners get impacted first when projects are shut down or team sizes are trimmed.

3) Senior employees – Yes and no surprises. All companies expect their employees to upskill themselves along with increasing experience and move up the ranks. While it is true that the corporate pyramid becomes thinner with increasing height, employees who choose to do nothing or continue staying in specific roles become redundant with time and replaceable. In a previous job, I have seen experienced people of a specific skill being let go and people with less experience of the same skill being hired to fill up those roles. Senior resources are needed in projects only till the time the projects become stable and all information is documented. Then projects can be run easily with a couple of senior people and team members with lesser experience who need to be paid far less salaries. This is also a way for the companies to reduce expenses and make the projects profitable. Moreover, new graduates are leaving colleges with the knowledge of latest technologies and who need to be paid only a fraction of what the senior employees are being paid. This is also making senior employees redundant and expendable.

Top executives are needed for businesses to ride through the storm so they will not be let go off now. In the recent past, some companies were offering high severance packages for top executives to take voluntary retirement because new and young leaders bring fresh perspectives into leadership roles.

It is important to note here that as employee headcount increases the number of internal staff in human resources, facilities and other departments also increase. These employees play no part in revenue generation and add on to cost to the company. Employee reduction also results in the reduction of internal staff count.

Do we need to fear or worry about layoffs? Lush green forests dries out in the summer heat and just a single spark of fire is needed to burn it to the ground. All that smoke and heat, in turn. rises up and brings rain. From the ashes, life springs up again. Life is cyclic and this is the Universal truth. Difficult times force us to introspect and is the time for reality check. These are the times which help us to understand if we want to learn something new and get back into the market or find our true passion and set our lives in a new direction. Any transition is difficult and no one is living happy, peaceful and stable lives which is what everyone is aspiring for. Challenges will come in everyone’s life at some point in time. Overcoming them and moving forward is what makes us truly successful. 

Dreams that are destroying humanity

It all started post World War II when businesses slowly got back on their feet, from the manufacturing sector & into the government sector. Work hard on 8-10 hour shifts through the entire professional life, save as much money as possible & the dream was to own a house by retirement. Owning a car was status symbol. When banks made enough & more money they started giving out loans for houses & cars & flipped the dream. Now everyone is vying to own a house & a car before they are 30. A few underlying factors subtly changed:-

1) Saving money in banks changed to repaying loans to banks. It didn’t matter if people couldn’t save for a few months but if repayments on home & car loans get stuck for a few months, banks could simply take away both. Living with that thought in itself creates stress.

2) Saving money for 30 years is commitment without stress but repaying loans for 30 years is lugging stress for the best part of our lives. Now it is simple enslavement to the corporate sector, house, car & everything else bought on loans.

3) More salary means more money goes on to taxes. Add inflation, repayment of loans, supporting aged parents, providing children with quality education & a host of other needs & salary hikes that are insignificant when compared to the ever growing financial needs means people are being forced to moonlight in a second job or run some gigs in parallel to their regular jobs. Add the stress of having to hide their other sources of revenue from their employer.

4) When this entire ecosystem of stress got built, people were sold another dream. Insurance. Keep paying insurance premium & it will take care of medical expenses when people get sick. So now there are hospitals & treatment & no one cares about not getting sick & having wellness centers. The best part of all this is, banks now sell insurance. The entity that is the major contributor to the stress in our lives is taking more money from us with the promise of taking care of us when we are sick. It is a different thing that insurance helps with cashless treatment only in cases of planned treatment. For urgent health issues, we have to pay first & then chase the insurance companies for months who in turn will keep finding ways to reduce insurance payment as much as they can.

Barter system between time & remuneration has existed from the beginning of human civilization. But now, we are having to trade both time & health for money. I see houses everywhere with only aged parents living in them. Their children have all gone to other places, bought houses and settled there. Then there is investment on real estate, taking loans & buying houses/apartments to save on taxes. On a planet with 10-12% of habitable land area we are building far more than we need. Human needs are already spiraling out of control, if we do not see what we are doing to ourselves all the talk of mental health is not going to make sense. Working in night shifts has completely disrupted our circadian clock and is making our body a haven for all kinds of diseases to thrive and spread. Our species is simply going to implode in the not too distant future.

Unraveling the conspiracy theories around COVID-19 pandemic & the depopulation agenda

When established norms and widely accepted views are questioned and challenged, it has become normal to call them conspiracy theories. The term conspiracy theory has a predecessor. Heresy. Anyone opposing the views of the Church were branded as heretics and burned on stakes. Apparently more than 50,000 women who opposed the patriarchal rules of the Church were branded as witches and burned on stakes during the Dark Ages. One of the most famous ones is Nicolaus Copernicus who was admonished by the Church for his heliocentric theory which displaced Earth and put Sun at the center of the Universe. The most famous conspiracy theories that have been going around for the past several decades are about aliens and UFOs.

Two conspiracy theories have taken hold of the world from the time the COVID-19 pandemic broke out.

1) The COVID-19 virus was released from the virology lab at Wuhan in China and it did not jump from the bats to us as we have been repeatedly told
2) The objective of the COVID-19 virus and the vaccines for it is part of the depopulation agenda, to wipe out most of our population

I have been getting bombarded with messages on social media about these for quite some time now so I finally decided to take an objective look at them. We know Copernicus was ridiculed and his work was banned for a few centuries before sensibility dawned on the scientific community as knowledge about science progressed. So it doesn’t matter if what are called as conspiracy theories are true or not. Throughout our history, majoritarian views have always been opposed and we have fought relentlessly for dissenting voices to be heard. An opposing view to an established norm allows us to look at the other side and maybe change or improve the existing situation.

So,
Was the COVID-19 virus released from a lab? I would rephrase the question and ask “has our medical and technological knowledge become sophisticated enough to create and release a new virus from a lab?” We do have enough knowledge now to splice up our genes in the lab, not all genes but we are on the way. We are working on repairing defective genes which means we can get rid of genetic diseases. This means we must have developed the capability to manipulate and alter the genetic structure of at least some of the organisms. Medical community would endorse the need to play around with microorganisms so that new medicines and vaccines can be developed to fight potentially new diseases. But there is a catch here. Medicine is a profit making industry. Creating new medicines and vaccines is innovation for pharmaceutical companies. There are two problems with it.

1) The medical system we follow now is treatment based and not wellness based. Prevention is better than cure no longer holds water now. We have become too busy to worry about our health. Health is wealth has become wealth is health. There are hospitals and we have insurance policies. So we live with the belief that when we fall sick we will be adequately protected. The reality is nowhere near to it. Our immune system is and has always been our first line of defense. The caveat with the immune system though is, it needs to be constantly engaged with the natural elements. That is the only way it can learn about new diseases and variants of existing ones and develop immunity against them. Medicines and vaccines are boosters for the immune system, a tiny external intervention for the immune system to learn about new diseases and protect us faster.

2) When we fiddle with microorganisms and alter their genes in labs, no amount of safeguards are enough. If the virus manages to escape in any way, it will mutate immediately when exposed to nature. A disaster in the form of an epidemic can start off any time. Because of our global proximity now, it can become a pandemic in no time like we have seen in the case of COVID-19.

So can we mutate and create a new virus in a lab? Yes. Will we release such a virus into nature? We could. After atomic and chemical warfare, biological and cyber space are the new means of waging wars. Was this done with COVID-19 virus? We may never know. If yes, would there be a possible intent? Read on.

Now, is there something called a depopulation agenda? Well, apparently there was. Noah’s story of the Ark is not just a Biblical story. We need to understand a bit of history here. The authors of the Bible have borrowed heavily from ancient Babylonian texts which in turn were written under the influence of even more ancient Sumerian tablets. This is recorded history. Our history goes back even further than this. It is called pre-history. How do we know this? Ancient texts all over the world are written in verses. Pre-history was information handed down to the next generations orally because writing wasn’t invented at that time. What is created as a verse can be recited and sung. Its far more easier to remember and reproduce a story as a song than a remember it as a story.

I guess most people know of Noah’s story. Noah is the Biblical name the name is different in different ancient texts.

So the story goes that the creator Gods of humans left Earth and sent angels (watchers) to watch over our activities and report back to them. Our lifestyle became wayward with time, we procreated randomly creating genetic diseases among us, our population increased manifold and we caused huge destruction to nature. To add to the woes, the angels became enamored with the beautiful women, procreated with them and the children born to them became giants. When the Gods finally got wind of what was happening on Earth, they were enraged. They banished the angels from heaven forever and decided to cleanse the planet of us. So Noah was chosen and tasked with building a boat to house a pair of every animal. Then the world was swept over by floods and everything was destroyed. The plan was to eventually kill Noah and his family , but one God took pity and gave us another chance.

The situation we are in now is eerily similar to Noah’s story. Massive population, random lifestyle, genetic diseases and wanton destruction of nature. We are 7 billion now and the way we are growing we will likely add 2 billion more in another 20-30 years. The planet cannot handle anymore of us. More depletion and destruction of nature will trigger a full scale mass extinction event. Natural disasters will wipe out every living being as nature seeks to restore her balance. It is imperative that our population on the planet decreases significantly. A war will be nuclear this time and will destroy the planet completely. The only way out is large scale mortality through diseases. Here’s a small story to illustrate how larger population is detrimental to our survival.

This is a cat that comes home for food but doesn’t stay and is not domesticated. He came home sick last week. He isolated himself from all other cats, refused to have food and slept for two days. He banked on his immune system to fight off what had afflicted him and used all the blood in his body to power his immune system. He started having food only when he felt better. If we were doing this we wouldn’t be needing lockdowns. But we can’t because we cannot isolate ourselves completely from others because of our huge population thereby making everyone vulnerable to contagious diseases. This, along with the fast depleting natural resources has made our ever burgeoning population the biggest risk for our own existence and is a significant reason for our increasing mortality rate.

Most people above 60 years have comorbidities and life threatening health issues. A large population of people between 18-45 years are leading sedentary lifestyles. Their lives revolve around A/c houses to A/c cars to A/c office buildings in cities every day. Add poor eating and sleeping habits to this with little to no physical activities. These two groups of people have very poor immunity and are vulnerable to any new disease.

So is there an overwhelming case to depopulate ourselves? Yes. Nature controls population of organisms primarily in two ways: 1) Predator-prey relationship 2) Diseases. Our population increase began when we exited nature’s predator-prey food chain which was accentuated after we found ways to treat diseases. Through population control nature imposes the “survival of the fittest” rule on all living beings. Only the healthiest animals procreate and take their species forward. The whole exercise of yearly migration of animals is not just a journey in search of food. Only the ones that survive all the odds during the journey will return home and reproduce. The survival of the species is always important than the survival of an individual and it applies to all organisms. If our massive population has become a threat to the survival of our own species and of the planet then the only option left is to downsize it. Was the COVID-19 virus released intentionally to depopulate us? We may never know.

But the increasing oddities on the ground are hard to ignore. Manufacturers of COVID-19 vaccines are demanding indemnity from any adverse short term and long term outcomes of administering the vaccines. That in itself is a huge question on the credibility of the vaccines. Masking, sanitizing and social distancing have to continue even after taking the vaccines, the reason given being current vaccines may not protect us from new variants of COVID-19 virus. If this assumption is true, we are all vulnerable to new variants of small pox, TB, etc. All the vaccines we have taken from our childhood are useless. I asked this to a doctor and all he could do was to smile.

Moreover, this is a video of a new mask that is being developed to protect us from COVID-19 virus. Sneezing is our biological response to foreign substances in our respiratory system just like vomiting is for our digestive system. When we sneeze we instinctively cover our faces. So the first line of defense for contagious respiratory diseases is masks. Governments have imposed using of masks on all of us without specifying what type of masks will protect us from the virus. Use of random masks will not protect us from any diseases. The logic behind making a mask for protection from viruses like COVID-19 is very simple. Either destroy the viruses on the inside or outside of the masks. Why did no government take the initiative to build such masks? Why did they start vaccination drives with vaccines the efficacies of which are not yet clear? Finally, are we saying it took us two years to come up with a mask and less than a year to make vaccines?

Ironically, if some among us were to indeed execute a depopulation program, it wouldn’t be the healthiest and strongest among us. Rather, it would be the ones with money and power, the ones who have the means and the wherewithal. It is money and power that decides how strong we are in society now and not our immune system. If the healthiest among us become casualties of the depopulation program and only the wealthiest among us with lesser immunity survive, where will this lead the future of our species to? Looks like a high octane topic of debate.

I am hoping that the COVID-19 pandemic and the two conspiracy theories will start entrenching in all of us the need to improve and strengthen our immune system and the realization that only a strong immune system will make us healthy and protect us from diseases. About the rest, let the debates and flow of social media messages continue.

Humanity’s fantasy world has been shattered by a virus

I had a very interesting conversation with a friend (who is going to read this) about whether COVID-19 virus is a zoonotic virus or a man made virus. There are many articles and videos that have been circulating on social media proposing to provide evidence that the virus was created in the virology lab at Wuhan, China. What my friend is worried about is, if these allegations turn out to be true, it means we have interfered in nature and tampered with the natural evolution of a microorganism. He wants strict regulations on biological testing similar to the ones imposed on nuclear and chemicals testing so that we do not end up engaging in a biological war with one another like the atom bombs in Japan and chemical warfare in Vietnam. My answer to him was in 2 parts. 1) Human interference in nature We started interfering in nature when we started cutting down trees to build our houses. We did not pause to wonder why animals are not doing the same. Rather, in our arrogance of having superior intelligence we looked down upon the supposed lower intelligence of animals. We never wondered from where did we get this ability which no other living being on the planet has. Nature will never give the intelligence and ability to any living being to destroy nature’s ecosystem. Nature is a closed ecosystem which means everything that is born or created within it will or has to return to it. Animals build nests using items available in nature which gets recycled by nature after use. When we die our bodies are recycled by nature. Fully knowing this, we created tar, concrete, plastic and a zillion other things nature cannot recycle and knowing that nature cannot recycle our waste, we keep forcing it on nature which nature has duly started returning to us during natural calamities. So we have come a long way to worry about human interference in nature now. 2) Tampering with the natural evolution of a microorganism My friend believes biological testing in labs is essential to understand about microorganisms so that we can build medicines and vaccines to protect us from them. First of all, every organism in nature is in continuous evolution. So there is no end to biological testing. Why are animals not doing the same? This is not about higher or lower levels of intelligence. Nature has a sophisticated and effective way of handling this situation. Immune system. Diseases are simply conflicts between organisms of higher and lower orders. All living beings when exposed to nature will constantly be under the attack of microorganisms. Immune system keeps learning about more microorganisms and becomes more robust in protecting us. So we do not need to test microorganisms in labs for our protection from them. The bigger problem with this is, not everyone will have good intentions. These genetically modified microorganisms could be stolen and released into nature. We will have no control over them once they are in nature and consequences could be catastrophic. We have found ways to splice genes in lab and now we are working towards repairing genes in human genetic structure that cause diseases. I am all for it because it can cure genetic diseases like diabetes permanently. But any lab experiments that can potentially involve nature has to be strictly forbidden. Even if COVID-19 is a man made virus and we let it out into nature, did it affect nature? No animal died because of it. 3 million humans and counting have died. Every time we go against nature, the consequences will come back to bite only us. Most importantly, it is inconsequential whether the virus is natural or man made because in either case it has broken the glass houses we have been living in for so long. This goes back to the conversation I had with another friend (who is also going to read this). Every aspect of human life has become untenable in nature. Our food habits have become extremely inorganic and unhealthy, our sleep cycle has vanished and our entire lifestyle is in disarray. We are no longer in communication with nature because of which our immune system gets to learn nothing and has literally become idle. One virus of moderate virulence has raised a question mark over the survival of our species itself. Diseases are one of the ways in which nature controls population of every living being. So death is inevitable. Greater the size of population higher the mortality rate and more number of reasons to die. If diseases don’t kills us, accidents, murders and so many other reasons are lurking. We do not even know if we will wake up from our sleep the next day. Common reasons for death during sleep – silent cardiac arrest, brain hemorrhage. But we are “existing” in a blissful fantasy world. We take housing loans and agree to pay EMIs every month for the next 20-30 years. In interviews, candidates are asked ” where do you find yourself in the next 5 years or what are your professional goals for the next 5 years”. Education is linked to profession which is linked to money which is linked to social status. Health has become irrelevant. We take insurance policies and swagger around in arrogance that when we fall sick, the policies will take care of us. Health is wealth has become wealth is health. We rush to hospitals where we get treated when we fall sick. Note : Hospitals are not places that ensure we do not fall sick. Doctors do not take us off tablets and tell us how to become healthy naturally. We no longer seem to remember that prevention is better than cure. Moreover what diseases are doctors and hospitals curing us from anyways? We are given medication that suppress diseases. There is still no cure available for even common cold. Google and see the classifications of headache. There is a type of headache called stress headache the cause of which medical community has no clue about. This is how little the medical community and doctors who treat us know about human anatomy. Medication for pain simply interrupt the signal to the brain that indicates pain so we stop feeling pain. This is called workaround in other professional jobs and cannot even be considered as treatment. Suppressing a disease and keeping it inside the body long enough can result in the genetic information of the disease getting encoded into our genetic structure. This is how genetic diseases are created and passed on to future generations, thereby making the entire species unhealthy. This is what has happened to us which animals with their lower intelligence avoids by identifying and abandoning/killing unhealthy offspring. Even more ironical are the facts about medication and vaccination. Diabetes is a genetic disease and medicines only help to keep it under control. Can pharmaceutical companies manufacture medicines and vaccines to repair our genetic structure? Human body is tuned to absorb vitamins from nature and food on its own. I have read about people in western countries who live on diet of vitamin tablets completely ignorant of the fact that human body is incapable of absorbing vitamins from tablets properly. I have heard of people suffering from Vitamin D deficiency in India which is literally unbelievable. I can understand this in the colder western countries where there is less sunlight but in a tropical country all it takes is soaking our body in sunlight for a while. We are all made to believe that medication will cure us and vaccines will protect us from diseases. In reality, medication and vaccines are top ups for our immune system, a miniscule external intervention which provides more information for the immune system to fight diseases and protect us. If our immune system is already weak, medicines and vaccines can never protect us on their own. These are the reasons why keeping ourselves healthy is so important for the survival of our species. We have no control over diseases and death. The healthcare system we have does nothing to protect us from diseases. All we can do is to stay healthy, maintain a good immune system and hope that it will protect us from diseases. We cannot run away from nature, live inside concrete buildings and hope to have a good immune system. People are being kept under lockdown now and are being told that staying at home will keep them safe from COVID-19 virus when the reality is governments are completely unprepared to handle a health crisis. Staying at home without enough physical activity and away from nature can drastically affect our immune system and make us vulnerable to other diseases. It is mind boggling that almost the entire human race has become so ignorant about themselves, about nature and have become so gullible to live in such an artificial world. There is a business evaluation model called PESTEL which evaluates uncertainties in the business environment such as political situations, economic conditions, etc to find the associated risks that can impact business prospects. The 2nd E in the model is for evaluating environmental factors which includes natural disasters and diseases. Very less importance is given to this as I came to understand from the experience of a local businessman. Even though some corporate companies do give importance to natural disasters, diseases are largely ignored. We saw how much companies have struggled after the COVID-19 pandemic broke out and it has taken a year for employees to get used to working from home. Just like fever is our immune system’s indicator that a foreign organism has entered our body, nature sends out signals when there are changes in its environment. Animals understand signs of natural disasters in advance and are able to protect themselves. We have lost that ability somewhere along our evolution. I do not know how useful is our higher intelligence if it does not even help us to survive in nature. I do not know if we are too late to break out of the glass houses we are living in and return to nature, but it is never too late to try.

A novel way to treat COVID-19 and India’s new treatment guidelines

Dr. Shankara Chetty, a doctor of Indian origin living in South Africa has done what should have been done at the onset of COVID-19 pandemic. He has conducted clinical diagnosis to understand the different stages a COVID-19 patient goes through & has treated more than 4000 patients without hospitalization & oxygen requirement.

What has helped him conduct the study are two reasons.  

1. He lives in a community which has no access to hospitals nearby & had to place their trust in him.

2. He has limited access to medicines so he had to find out the best treatment method based on the medicines he has      access to.  

He instructed everyone to approach him as soon as they got symptoms of cold & fever. When he started treatment, he observed that health of patients improved by the 3rd/4th day & for some, fever reappeared on the 6th/7th day. They started experiencing dyspnea (breathlessness) in the next 1/2 days. As soon as patients started reporting reappearance of fever, he put them on steroids to prevent dyspnea. He is attributing dyspnea to allergy in the lungs (caused by the creation of large amounts of cytokines). Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has adopted a similar strategy & has revised its guidelines for COVID treatment. Patients no longer need to panic, they just have to observe themselves & report any changes in their condition to doctors immediately. Starting to lose smell which was identified by the Delhi government last year as the marker to test for COVID infection could be the indicator leading to dyspnea.

A contagious virus having high virulence and also having a high rate of recovery is an anomaly. High rate of infection of a virus like small pox always leads to high rate of mortality. All the panic and fear was created because no proper clinical diagnosis of COVID-19 virus was conducted because of which people could not be educated and made aware of the symptoms and the need to observe themselves. People need to be quickly made aware of this so that they do not delay in consulting doctors as soon as they have symptoms of cold and fever and starting medication.

The takeaway from the doctor’s diagnosis is not about the medicines he used. Medicines and their dosage could vary depending on demography, people’s immunity, etc. That is for the doctors everywhere else to figure out. What he wants everyone to look at is his treatment timeline. Steroids have been in use for COVID treatment but when it should be administered for best effect is what he has addressed. Reporting recurrence of fever in the first 7 days is crucial for further treatment. His diagnosis is a blueprint for doctors all over the world to use to treat COVID in the best possible ways.

The COVID pandemic is unraveling India’s freefall in every possible ways

People in India who have known me well for some time may have noted that I gradually stopped writing about politics after 2019 elections. I have never voted in my life that is how interested I have been in politics and my trust in India’s electoral system. In 2013, a photo started circulating of a supposed bus station in Ahmedabad glorifying the Gujarat Model of development which got called out as fake in a day or two. It sent alarm bells ringing through my head because only a few days back my dad was telling me that India now needs a strong leader like Modi. There was no need to use the photo of a bus station in China and try to pass it off as a bus station in Gujarat if the Gujarat Model of development was true by any measure. That is when I started taking interest in politics and started writing about it. I wrote for 5 years trying to expose all the misinformation and propaganda and hoping that it would help people make a better choices during 2019 elections. I stuck to writing in spite of being ridiculed by my school and college classmates and ex-colleagues and facing a good amount of abuses on social media. But we chose to continue to stay blinded and fooled.

All I have cared about is governance and administration largely because I have worked on projects in my jobs and I know how critical management and governance are for the success of every project. Those who are in positions of responsibility and who can influence people can do all the theatrics they want and flirt with propaganda after governance and administration. But ironically, if they focus on governance and administration they would have no time for theatrics and propaganda and all they want to do is to keep distracting and misleading people.

Everything that happened in the last 7 years has converged to the situation created by the pandemic now. India’s economy never really recovered from the devastation caused by the demonetization fiasco in 2016. The pandemic is merely an infected mole on a tumor. What the pandemic has unraveled is the depth of ignorance that exists in our society. There was a report of a political leader claiming that pouring lemon juice into our nostrils will help to protect us from COVID infection and a school teacher who had no other health issues died after trying it. People are getting infected with black fungus after they believed in the misinformation that lying in cow dung and cow urine can protect them from COVID virus. The below comments are just the icing on the “cake”.

India is in dire need of education before vaccination. The virus of ignorance is far more deadly than all the viruses in nature. But education is also complicated in India. Many of the Indians I know who vouched for the Gujarat Model are educated and are living abroad in the some of most developed countries of the world. Almost all of them are maintaining stoic silence now. Education is supposed to create the ability of critical thinking in us. Education helps us to use our rationale and logic and ask questions. But education in India is linked to jobs which in turn is linked to money and social status. An education system that does nothing for the growth of critical thinking is useless and waste of time. The country is learning many hard lessons now and I hope all the miseries people are suffering now will lead to the rise of a stronger and wiser version of India.

Concerns about COVID testing and vaccines

Its been a year and a half since the pandemic began and ironically, information about the COVID-19 virus, the tests done to identify infected people and the vaccines is becoming more hazy and confusing with time. First, about the virus. There is a whole lot of noise and fear being driven into people through the media about the virus mutating and taking more deadlier forms. As a contagious virus spreads it does mutate and this is not new to the COVID-19 virus. The fear is being amplified with the information that the vaccine currently rolled out will not be effective against the new mutated forms of the virus and more doses of vaccine will be required. A virus, no matter how many times it mutates will have a specific genetic marker. Coronavirus is a family of viruses that includes the COVID-19 virus. They all have the same genetic marker which is why they are grouped under the coronavirus family. All of them cause respiratory diseases starting from common cold. If the genetic marker also changes during mutation then it will become an entirely new virus. Vaccines are developed specifically using these markers so logically it makes no sense in the claim that currently vaccinated people are vulnerable to mutated versions of the virus. Before getting into the testing part, it is important to understand some basics of nature and human anatomy. Our body is not built in a way to prevent microorganisms from entering it. Rather, it allows entry so that the immune system can keep getting more information, evolve and become more robust in protecting us. This is evolutionary and is the same in all animals. The analogy to this can be seen in the antivirus systems we have created to protect our computers. Even computer viruses have specific markers like the genetic markers viruses in nature have. The first antivirus software was created by collecting all the prevalent computer viruses and finding out their markers. Antivirus software have to be updated daily with the information of existing viruses and markers of new viruses. What we do not have in nature is the concept of firewall which prevents all information from entering and exiting a computer and can be fine tuned to allow only certain information to pass through. So when a microorganism enters our body, the immune system immediately goes into alert mode. Depending on how adversely the organism can affect us which we call virulence in the case of viruses, the body signals in the form of fever to indicate that the immune system is at work. There is no need to take tablets for fever. We take paracetamol tablets so that we can move around. When the same happens to animals, they immediately isolate themselves because it is considered by default in nature that any disease could potentially become contagious. The immune system works entirely using blood and the body directs a major part of blood in fighting the organism. So it is important to not burden our body with digestion of food which also requires a large quantity of blood. This is why animals stop eating when they are sick. It is also important to keep ourselves protected but at the same time we get enough sunlight and air. We are being told to do all these now if we are infected with the COVID-19 virus when we should have been doing these every time we fall sick. Most of the time, we fall sick because of seasonal changes. As our body adapts to changes in our environment we become more prone to be attacked by microorganisms. This is why there is autumn between the transition from summer to winter and spring between the transition from winter to summer. But in tropical regions, there is no winter season instead those regions have rainy season.  There is no autumn and spring seasons either. Rains continue for 6 months and as rain decreases, summer slowly starts. These climatic differences in different parts of the world has tremendous impact on people’s health. Most of north India has entered into summer season which will peak in June whereas summer peaks in April-May in south India and starts moving towards monsoon by June. Entire country is transitioning with climate changes now and there will obviously be spike in diseases. I have been wondering what the COVID-19 lab tests are all about and what exactly are they checking for to identify if someone is COVID +ve. Turns out the symptoms are fever, headache and sore throat. These are the symptoms of common cold and flu which affects large number of people during periods of above mentioned climate changes. There are no COVID specific symptoms and hence no COVID specific tests.  I was initially under the impression that the differentiator for COVID-19 virus would be respiratory issues when hospitals in Delhi got inundated with people for testing last year and Delhi government had to ask people to isolate themselves for flu like symptoms and only get themselves tested if they lose their sense of smell. But it seems that all viruses in the coronavirus family can potentially cause respiratory issues. The virus passes through our nostrils and gets lodged in the wind pipe. If a weak immune system is not able to eliminate the virus it will eventually travel into the lungs. Any microorganism that enters an internal organ can cause serious and life threatening situations. In my neighborhood a family had common flu and cold. They isolated themselves and informed the government health center. People came from hospital, tested them and marked them as COVID +ve. They recovered within a week’s time. Everyone who has cold and flu symptoms are probably getting marked as COVID +ve which is why we are seeing huge spike in the number of infected people and high recovery rate. The numbers will reduce considerably if only people with cold and flu symptoms and respiratory issues are tagged as COVID +ve. Even more bizarre is the case with asymptomatic cases. Just because one person came into contact with another who was identified as COVID +ve, that person need not be asked to isolate without showing any COVID specific symptoms. Even if the virus has entered that person’s body, there is no way to check if the person’s immune system has developed antibodies for the virus. Antibody testing cannot be completely relied upon. Showing symptoms of fever and cold after a few days could also be because of a common cold infection or another health issue and not necessarily because of COVID infection. Because people have different immunity levels, the effect of a virus could be vastly different between people. Now to the COVID vaccines. First question is, if pharma companies could take so much effort and come up with vaccines in a year’s time, why not use technology to create masks which will prevent the virus from passing from one person to another? Simply because there is way too much money to be made with vaccines. None of the vaccines for any diseases does anything spectacular. Vaccines are now made by stripping out the genetic markers of the viruses from their DNA. Injecting the genetic marker into the body will apparently help the immune system in understanding the genetic code of the virus and build immunity for it without having to dissect the entire virus to understand its genetic code. What is weird though is the instruction to continue staying at home, using hand sanitizers and maintaining social distancing even after COVID vaccination. We have taken vaccinations in the past and used to have body pain and fever for a day or two after which we used to resume our normal lives. Scientists don’t yet know if we can still transmit the virus to others after we have been vaccinated. Scientists cannot simply ask people to do things when they themselves are not sure about what they are asking for. Yes, this is a contagious virus but with more than 99% recovery rate. What they are asking for would have been understandable if it was similar to small pox virus. So if vaccination is just a training program for our immune system to understand and fight a new microorganism why are we being given two vaccination shots and possibly more in the future? From the recovery rate it is obvious that COVID-19 is a very mild virus when compared to the small pox virus, yet we have all had only one vaccination dose for small pox. It is a well known fact that the current vaccines are not adequately tested. Phase-3 trials have not been satisfactorily completed. We are a population of over 7 billion and sampling size for testing the vaccines was in 100s or a few 1000s. Strength of immune system and their response to diseases varies widely from person to person. A 2nd and 3rd dose will reinforce immune response is what they are claiming based on testing the vaccine on a very minor part of the population. This is very abstract and there is no way to confirm their observation after rolling out the vaccines for large scale vaccination. There is no clarity on the time duration between 2 doses of the vaccines and it is being changed randomly now. Moreover, increasing cases of mortality after the first and both shots of the COVID vaccines are getting reported which included a well known south Indian film actor. There are more such deaths reported by individuals on Twitter which won’t appear on mainstream media. There are also several reports of serious side effects of vaccines getting reported from European countries. Did those people die purely because of COVID virus or did they have comorbidities? Did they get infected by the virus externally after vaccination? This means the vaccine is playing a part in reducing our immune prowess. Or did the genetic marker introduced into their body through the vaccine grow into a full virus and overwhelm their immune system? Both scenarios are equally terrifying. Even more scary is the fact that vaccine manufacturers are not able to say if there will be long term adverse effects of the vaccines on us. In the light of so much information, it is my responsibility to ask questions about the virus and the efficacy of the vaccines. My purpose of writing this is to stop all the panic that is going on now and make people understand to go to hospitals only when the viral infection persists for some days and they start developing respiratory issues. We are being told to vaccinate in a way that our immune system is incapable of eliminating the COVID virus on its own. As the recovery rate shows, that is clearly not the case.  I believe current COVID vaccines are less effective and more detrimental to our health now. I am not against vaccination but my question is why vaccine for a viral infection with more than 99% recovery rate? Isn’t a medicine enough? We treat common cold mostly naturally and with tablets then why vaccine for COVID-19 when both viruses are from the same family of virus with very similar virulence? If vaccines are required for every disease then why haven’t vaccines been developed for common cold and flu yet? It is important for us to avoid forming large crowds, maintain hygiene and social distancing at all times. During yearly migration of birds, they flock together in large numbers and that is when their mortality rate increases due to contagious diseases. We celebrate festivals with massive congregations like Kumbh Mela in India every year in complete ignorance that an epidemic can break out any time in nature without any warnings. The most important issue is with our population size which continues to grow unabated. As population size of any species increases its mortality rate also increases. Humans are the only species that pass on diseases genetically which adds to the possibility of more diseases arising among us. Staying healthy is the key to having a strong immune system. It is the only way to survive in nature that is extremely hostile to all living beings, something we are blissfully ignorant about.

Reasons for India’s COVID part deux – Failed governance, irrational people & complete ignorance about nature

The second wave of COVID-19 pandemic is upon India with greater ferocity. The pandemic started in late 2019, had spread from China to Europe and had just touched the shores of the USA. The Government of India was warned and was well aware of the impending crisis but it dithered in closing down international borders. The result was an epidemic like situation which resulted in harsh lockdown of people and millions suffered in the aftermath with unemployment and hunger.

This time around, the reason for the lockdown is even more ridiculous. Restrictions were eased, life seemed to be getting back to normal and the government even boasted that India had beaten back the virus without any supporting evidence. Festivals were allowed to be organized and state assembly elections were announced by the Election Commission. There was massive congregation for Kumbh Mela festival and huge election rallies in 5 states. It is peak summer across most of India at this time and people are vulnerable to falling sick. People tend to eat less food and sleep less when weather becomes hot which results in reduced immunity. So it is no surprise that COVID-19 has reared up its ugly head again.

Lockdowns are essentially government’s way of saying it is incapable of handling an escalating situation, abdicating responsibility and passing the buck on to the people. In simple terms, diseases are conflicts between higher order and lower order organisms in nature and along with the food chain is how nature keeps the population of every living being under control. Microorganisms are constantly mutating and evolving in nature. A disease of any magnitude could break out any time in nature. We have always been living on this ticking time bomb. Even if the government does not understand this, it is its responsibility to constantly improve and ramp up the health infrastructure of the country. In India, in most of the states, education and health are on the lowest side of the government’s priority list. So will the government be ever prepared for a pandemic? This governance failure is passed on to people and people are made to suffer. Locking people up inside their homes has the detrimental effect of lowering their immunity level and making them vulnerable to more diseases but the government is shortsighted enough to focus on winning a battle now and not being able to see a war coming in the future.

Kerala government is coming up with weird rules as it began a state wide lockdown yesterday. Unlike during the last year’s lockdown, when supermarkets were allowed to function, this time supermarkets have been closed down. Supermarkets are the best places to manage crowds and enforce social distancing. Now, people are rushing to the local stores where crowd control and social distancing is impossible. Opening supermarket stores will distribute the people among the supermarkets and local shops and reduce the possibility of transmission. In a nearby local store, two customers were apparently squabbling over one remaining packet of bread. I wrote to the district collector to consider opening supermarkets and received no response. Now, the government has come up with a website portal for generating e-pass for emergency travel within respective cities and towns. The instructions state that even for medical emergencies, people have to apply for the e-pass, wait for approval, then print it and carry with them. The irony here is, the government seems to be expecting everyone who has internet access at home to also own printers. Printing is usually done at local internet browsing centers which are all shut down now. Upon enquiry, I was told two things. 1) To call the local councilor and he/she will make all arrangements 2) A self written affidavit is enough for medical emergencies. They are expecting someone to sit and write an affidavit or call the councilor and wait when their father/mother/sibling needs emergency medical care. This is the level of incompetence and complete lack of rationale that plagues India’s civil administration.

The virulence of COVID-19 virus is of very small magnitude when compared to the virus that caused small pox. Millions have died because of small pox and my granny used to say that wailing could be heard from every other house because death was everywhere. When a foreign substance of any form enters our body, our immune system immediately mobilizes itself to fight and destroy it. Our body is a sophisticated system and our immune system is designed in such a way as to aggressively restore the balance of the body when something causes an imbalance. The first step is to isolate the foreign substance and prevent it from multiplying and spreading through the blood. Once this is done, the immune system will eliminate the foreign substance. In the case of COVID-19, the first step is failing so the immune system tries more aggressively to attack the virus. This is resulting in the immune system losing focus from other diseases people are suffering from and the subsequent complications led to most number of deaths in the first wave.

After the second wave has started, I am hearing about younger people and people without comorbidities getting
affected. There seems to be only one reason for this. Rapid urbanization has revamped people’s food habits and lifestyle completely which has alienated people even further from nature. Our immune system stays efficient only when it comes into contact with different types of microorganisms constantly, fights them and adapts itself to new diseases. This is all about information, so the greater information our immune system has about microorganisms the better it will be able to protect us. When a boxer quits fighting he invariably gains weight and becomes sluggish. The same happens with the immune system when we spend our entire time holed up in A/c rooms and travel in A/c vehicles. Then, when our junk food and “eating-at-whatever-time” lifestyle leads to diseases like cholesterol, diabetes, high BP and cardiac issues, the immune system is in no state to fight them. On top of all this, when a new virus attacks us for which the immune system needs time to fight, we can only expect the worse to happen to us.

The entire Indian system is at fault for this second wave. The Election Commission should not have gone ahead with the state assembly elections without a clear green signal from the medical fraternity. Even when the elections were declared, no political party showed any inclination to oppose the decision knowing fully well that election rallies are inevitable in the electoral process in India which always leads to massive uncontrolled crowds. Every political party is hungry to win elections and grab people’s power no matter what the situation is. Even the Supreme Court did not choose to step in, cancel the elections and order incumbent state governments to continue as caretaker governments. We, the people did not bother either. We knew what happened last year yet we chose to go for election rallies and on election day to vote in large numbers. Add to this, Indians are addicted to festivals and festivities. Even pandemics don’t matter because Gods will protect us.

The disaster the world is witnessing now has been in the making from the time of India’s independence from colonial rule. India is a democracy only by it’s Constitution. “Rule” is still the word used instead of “govern”, especially by the media. India is “ruled” by central & respective state governments. People’s representatives become people’s rulers & become inaccessible & unaccountable after they win elections. Corruption has become an incurable disease. Religions driven by blind belief take precedence over law & order. Orders passed by courts are imposed by civil administration which is controlled by the government so courts do not have the power to punish lapses in governance. So warnings of a second wave of the pandemic were conveniently ignored for conducting elections & festivals and the entire country is suffering again. Calls for Modi to resign are insensible because replacing leaders without reforming the system is not going to change anything.

Finally, what is incomprehensible is the fear of death among people which the media is amplifying and driving into everybody’s minds. Death is a natural conclusion to life in the entire universe. Our Sun will burn out and die in a few billion years. The Universe itself is supposed to come to an end. Millions of animals and human beings are dying every day because of a variety of reasons. Diseases are one way of population control in nature. This may not be to everybody’s taste but this is how nature works. I say this knowing fully well that my parents and I could also get infected with COVID-19. Nature follows the golden rule of “Survival of the fittest”. Only the strongest will survive in nature. We moved away from nature and forgot the golden rule and to keep ourselves healthy at all times. I hope this pandemic will be a reminder for everyone to return to nature, understand nature better and improve our lifestyle drastically. Our lives hinge on abiding and living by nature’s rules and flouting them will only lead to our own destruction.

COVID-19 has brought into focus the importance of business risks due to natural disasters and epidemics

Back in 2018, much before the pandemic began, a businessman I know told me one day that his company was taking up the franchise of Wrangler, the leading international apparel brand and he was setting up a showroom in my hometown. When people look for more choices & one brand doesn’t fit all, I asked him why had he chosen to invest in a single brand & not a multi brand store. He had no answer. What baffled me was when I asked him about his operational costs. Since it could take up to 3 years for a business venture to break even & become profitable I asked him how had he planned to meet his operational costs till he reached break even & if he had ensured he could raise enough money every month. All he could do was to roll his eyes at me. Clearly, he was expecting to make enough sales from the first month itself to meet the expenses. To top this, he had started a slew of footwear shops in shopping malls across the state. The pandemic was an unexpected event but the demonetization fiasco in 2016 had sunk the Indian economy & he had made all the investments in bleak market conditions.

Last week, he called me to tell me that Kontoor Brands India Private Limited, the owners of Wrangler and Lee brands is moving it’s business online and has sent a letter to all it’s franchisees to close their stores. What struck me immediately was, in the franchisee agreement he signed with Kontoor, the ownership of business risk in the case of a large scale disruption may not have been mentioned. Even in rare cases, when a clause for natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods are added, epidemics are never even thought about.

He has invested more than Rs. 1 crore ($135,256) till now and he hasn’t made any profits from the store yet. My home state was hit by devastating floods in consecutive years in 2018 and 2019 and before businesses could recover from them, the pandemic struck. Kontoor is unlikely to pay any compensation or make a very small compensation offer and would argue that loss of business from their own and franchise shops and growing number of customers online due to the pandemic is what has forced them to move their business completely online. His only recourse lies in proving in court that the business agreement he signed with Kontoor Brands is invalid as it is one sided and mentions only about conditions and risks for his company and nothing for Kontoor Brands which throws the validity of the agreement into question. The agreement was signed for a period of 5 years and the franchisees are deprived of the right to cancel the agreement for any reason but this restriction does not apply for Kontoor Brands. The agreement has been written under the assumption that in the 5 years, nothing can or will go wrong with Kontoor Brands. For example, what if, due to financial irregularities, Kontoor Brands goes bankrupt? Do the franchisees have to bear the risk of business issues Kontoor Brands face? Companies use the franchise model to extend the reach of their products into the market and thereby increase their sales and revenue, so if a franchisee store gets damaged by a natural disaster, will the company have or will take complete or partial ownership of the damages? None of these business risks have been mentioned in the agreement. If he had spoken to me before signing the agreement, he may not have signed it at all.

If this issue goes to court, only someone who is a lawyer and has worked as a legal advisor in the corporate sector can clearly argue for the franchisees. But the bigger quagmire is, if Kontoor Brands has to compensate every franchisee for the investments they made, it will go bankrupt. There has to be a middle path and franchisees are going to have to swallow half of their investment or even more as loss.

This is going to be a hard and bitter pill to swallow for all the businesses that ignored diseases and took nature for granted when signing business deals. Natural disasters and epidemics can strike us anytime and business fortunes fluctuate with each passing day. The COVID-19 pandemic has put these aspects into sharp focus. Business risks have to be clearly identified using the PESTEL (Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental, Legal) model and listed out clearly in the business agreements along with the ownership of each business risk. This is going to be the only way forward for companies to do business together amicably.