HUMAN IMMUNITY MECHANISM

Immunity is our body’s ability to fight the virus and bacteria that are harmful to it. It comes in two ways; inborn and adaptive.

Inborn immunity is the innate ability of the body to quickly jump at protecting it against the intruder. It is a set of ever ready and ever vigilant cells that attack  the intruding pathogen instantly, to kill it, mostly succeeding but failing at times as the intruder may come in large numbers and its intensity, much higher. 

Adaptive immunity is what the body acquires as it goes through the infection. Adaptive immunity comes from two types of white blood cells; T & B.

T cells detect the molecular details of the pathogen and based on it, produce a targeted response on the intruder to kill it. T cells also manage and control the early attack by inborn immunity which is called ‘cytokine storm’. Excessive response of the cytokine storm can destroy the lung tissues, thereby creating acute respiratory distress, leading to short supply of oxygen to internal organs, resulting in multiple organ failure and possibly death. 

B cells produce the antibody, a protein that sticks on viral particle, binding it and  blocking it from entering our cells, thus, stopping the infection on its track. 

Antibody in the blood peaks during infection and wanes, as the infection recedes. However, a waning antibody doesn’t mean that our immunity is low and we are susceptible to infection. T & B cells retain the memory of the infection and the the memory cells continue to stay in blood. If another infection starts on the body, memory cells charge up to produce a new bunch of antibodies to fight it

What a fantastic defence mechanism our body has!

SCIENCE, SEX & SEDITION [Revisiting the ISRO spy scandal of 1994 - an individual understanding]

 This reading could give some reasonable clarity on:

 1.     What actually caused the ISRO Spy Scandal in 1994?

2.     How people are sacrificed to protect the deep State secrets?

3.     Why Kerala Press and media was/is not objective in its reporting?

4.     How could a serious but unconnected case make strange political connotations?

5.     How arrogance bring about one’s downfall?

 

Due to limited global sanctions against India on account of its un-allowed indulgence in Atomic energy sector, the country faced many difficulties during 1970s and beyond. Thus, Indian space and atomic energy institutions and establishments weren’t allowed to procure or avail high-end technology gadgets & knowhow from outside, making it the reason for India making its own super computer and reaching self-reliance in harnessing the space and atomic energy technologies

As a part of it, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), was denied the know-how of cryogenic engine technology, an integral part of India’s advanced GSLV project, which otherwise would have come from Russia, that stood as a stumbling block to the progress of nation’s space research programs. 

To overcome this, with the blessing and permission from the powers that be, Indian scientists used some clandestine methods to gain access to this technology from Russia, of course, with the Russian establishment closing its eyes. The act was to bring some of the second rung space scientists from Russia and work with them at Trivandrum labs of ISRO (with VSSC, LPSC and other bull-work of the space research happening in Trivandrum). Nambi Narayanan, being the leader of the research project at ISRO, was entrusted with the responsibility of looking after the scientists here at TVM that included their work, stay, food, entertainment & Vodka (remember, they were Russians !). He was allocated unaccounted funds for that. The scientists were staying in Trivandrum as tourists. 

Nambi Narayanan (NN) was one of the reckoned top scientists in ISRO at that time, the face of the cryogenic technology and the blue eyed boy of the bosses. Naturally, things had gone into his head and many times he was showing this off, making more enemies than friends within, something that had resulted in him getting ostracised from fraternity, after his downfall. 

Naturally, these Russian scientists were here on clandestine mission for helping India acquire the cryogenic engine technology. Staying in guest houses and hotels, they were getting deprived of the physiological necessity of sex. Hearing it, and in order to keep their spirits high, NN decided on to organise this service for them in Trivandrum. 

During those days (80s & 90s), Trivandrum had been the Switzerland for Maldivians, having direct flight connection. Most of their health issues were resolved in Trivandrum hospitals like Cosmopolitan, GG, SUT etc. Some of the impoverished but smart ladies from Maldives also came in and utilised the opportunity to make money by providing sex to locals and the tourists coming to TVM. Mariam Rasheeda (MR) was one such person and her ‘handler’ was Fouziya Hassan, another middle aged Maldivian women. MR  by then had acquired  star reputation as one who provide more bang for the buck, and a very co-operative professional in the trade. 

MR, based on the invitation from NN’s connect, started giving the required services to the Russian ‘tourists’, on high periodicity, and she was very talented. She knew she was servicing some real VVIPs of the State, under the knowledge of Police & top officials. 

It is only genuine to surmise that the then Kerala Chief Minister, K Karunakaran and some key Police officials had known the story, at least vaguely, and the reason for the Russians staying in Trivandrum. 

All was going well but an incident brought the plot into the open. MR went to the office of the Special branch Police to get her Visa extended. As she had established good traction with the powers in police by then, (it wasn’t the first time that she was extending her Visa) she behaved little arrogantly with Mr. Vijayan, the police officer there. Vijayan could not appreciate her arrogance and he not only didn’t give her the extension but went on to check her antecedents and things started falling into the open, in bits and pieces. 

The powers be of the deep State, who knew the actual truth, kept quiet and acted as if they knew nothing. Most important aspect was that under no circumstances the country wanted the truth to come out, because it would have created such furore across the globe, and against an existing limited global sanction, the country’s clandestine act with Russian scientist would have put it into extremely bad situation as an offender/defaulter leading to international embarrassment and higher sanctions, such as economic blockade etc.  While the truth was hidden, The Russians ’tourists’ were quickly picked up and packed off to their country. Typical case as how the deep State would act to protect its official secrets.

Unbeknown, the local police went ahead with the interrogation of MR and she spilled whatever she knew. The police registered a prostitution case with connection to senior ISRO scientists and concocted a spy story with NN and his deputy, Sasikumaran trying to sell space technology to the foreigners, luring the clients with sex from international escorts, and by taking help of some ISRO contractors. The story got leaked (?) to the press & media, and without doing any proper fact check, the media connected the itsy-bitsy pieces and came out with an international spy scandal of science, sex & sedition. It wouldn’t be an overstatement that Kerala press & media, in it’s over enthusiasm, was instrumental in complicating the story, particularly with the sex content it (as we see later in Saritha, Swapna cases etc.) See how a small sexual gratification case has become that of sedition and treason, and the role of press & media in inflating ordinary story to a larger context. 

With MR already in, in Novemeber 1994, the police arrested NN, Sasikumaran, Fouzziya Hassan & two businessmen from Bangalore; M/s. Chandrasekharan & Sharma [ISRO head office being in Bangalore, these two were engaged in supply of materials to ISRO and based on request from scientists from ISRO, they did some favours to Fouzziya Hassan in getting admission for her daughters to some premium schools in Bangalore]. They had undergone heavy physical torture at the hands of police during the interrogation (which included the local office of a  central agency, the Intelligence Bureau -IB- too). It is learnt later that the torture was such a third degree one, in order to save the life, they all signed the confession

Using the spy scandal story, some disgruntled senior members within the ruling Congress party (which always suffered from inner party politics) led by AK Antony, Oommen Chandy et al; who were looking for an opportunity to get even with Chief Minister Karunakaran, found a political opportunity to displace the chief minister, whom they hated. By somehow connecting him into the sedition scandal and with the help of media, using such imaginative, titillating stories, they succeeded in getting him to resign. They also tried to implicate IG of Police, Raman Shrivastava who was very close to Karunakaran, in the case.  All the while, notice that the deep state had been indifferent to the innocence of people.

AK Antony, the receiver of the political windfall, came in as CM in place of Karunakaran, appointed Siby Mathews IPS as the Head of Special Investigations team of the ISRO Spy case. Mathews in collaboration with the IB local head, went on the rampage with the vengeance of a man possessed (a curious case of someone more loyal to the nation than the king himself!), to implicate everyone but without solid evidence. Due to public and opposition party pressure, by the end of the year, the state police handed over the case to Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) who did not find any evidence in the case and the court set the defendants free. This also is a typical example of an unconnected case acquiring political dimensions, thereby destroying the political career of a strong leader of the state. In politics, you wouldn’t know where the hit comes from!

The Communist party chief Minister, Nayanar who came into power later, reopened the case with another police team. NN approached the high court which rejected his appeal, upon which he moved the Supreme Court. In 1998, the CBI submitted a secret report to Supreme Court along with the final report of the case. The confidential report purportedly listed the investigative flaws committed by the investigating officers, the then Additional Director General of Police (ADGP) Siby Mathews, and Superintendents of Police K. K. Joshua and S. Vijayan. In 1998, the SC struck down the HC judgement and ordered a compensation of ₹1 lakh to all the accused

Thereafter, NN went on to file for compensation for the agonies suffered by him and he approached High court & Supreme Court as well as the Human Rights commission. From all places, high amounts of compensation orders were issued in his favour. He is still fighting a criminal case against the erring police officials requesting the Court to take punitive action against them.

Lastly, arrogance had played a key role in the negative development of the case. The first is that of Nambi Narayanan, while he was getting tortured and getting stamped as a traitor, losing his job and all the benefits associated with it & family undergoing extreme difficulties; no one from the ISRO or even his colleagues, came forward to help him. It could be said that no one wanted to be involved in this case of sedition, so they kept off. But it must also be noted that his highhanded arrogance also played a role in people not feeling like helping him. 

And for Mariam Rasheeda, had she kept her cool when she came to renew her visa, by not showing off in front of the Police officer, no one would have heard the case at all. This again is another example of arrogance bringing the downfall

***

A HISTORIC CONFLUENCE OF 2 SEMICONDUCTOR TECH COMPANIES; NVIDIA & ARM

In the early 80’s of the last century, computing came out of the hands of geeks and nerds and got democratised. IBM spearheaded the initiative of PCs with two unruly kids, Microsoft and Intel, with the OS and CPU coming from them. Many clones and compatibles came into being and Personal Computers never looked back.

Moors law [the number of transistors in an Integrated Circuit (IC) doubles every two years] guided the raw computing power of Intel CPU. To match with it, Microsoft went into GUI, with landmark avatar of its OS, the ‘Windows’.

IT matured into ICT (Information and communication Technology) and computers & phones merged, and in its evolution, smartphones of today combined the power of a mainframe computers of 2 decades back and the satellite phone.

Though Intel & Microsoft, the computer-less computer companies thrived, on the smartphone space both couldn’t make an impact. The Android and IOS became the de-facto OS standards and many CPU makers came into existence for smartphones. However one semiconductor technology company that chose its own path as the CPU of smartphones, M/s. ARM Holding which today has more than 250 mobile tech companies including Apple, using its CPU.

ARM started as a UK based company by the name, Acorn in the 1980s. Unlike Intel, this semiconductor design company leveraged on the principles of Reduced Instruction Set Computing (RISC). Compared to the powerful Intel CPUs, Acorn processors are less powerful but are very fast with an added advantage of having very less power consumption. After Steve Job’s second coming to Apple, the Apple Company combined with Acorn to derive into a new company, Acorn RISC Machine (ARM) Inc., with Apple owning 43% in it.

ARM processors gave a shot in the arm for Apple. Initially its Newton message pad, and later IPod, IPad and then IPhone used ARM processors as their CPU. There are wonderful stories of how ARM had helped Apple to grow. At first it was in 1999, when Apple sold 15% of ARM stock to get $1.1 Billion at a time it was doing badly, which helped Apple reinvigorate. Secondly Apple decided to do way with Intel processors for its devices in favour of ARM processors, thereby cutting down cost drastically and with ARM CPU, Apple went on to be a technology & innovation leader, skyrocketing its market capital into the Trillion dollar bracket.

By 2012 ARM was bought over by Softbank, the PE Company of Masayoshi Son, thus becoming a Japanese company. ARM’s business model is not into chip manufacturing bur designing and selling licenses to others to make and use it. It’s Revenues for the year 2020 was $1.5 billion with Profits hovering above $500 million, having assets worth $3.2 Billion. Though more than 20 billion ARM CPUs had been made so far, the company’s revenue looks small because it is not into manufacturing but in licensing of technologies.

On 13^th September 2020, it was announced that NVidia Corp. will buy ARM holding from Softbank for $40 Billion. NVidia is a globally successful Graphic Processor Unit manufacturer with a revenue of $11 Billion and a profit of close to $3 Billion.

The coming together of two semiconductor companies will go a long way into the thriving technology market, assisted by 5G and with IOT making a huge impact. 

THE STATE OF INDIAN ECONOMY

GDP contracted by 24% in AMJ 2020 quarter from last year

Private consumption spending which accounts for 60% of GDP, fell by 26%

Exports that was 20% to the GDP, fell by 20%

Investment  activity that accounted 32% of GDP, shrunk by of 47%

Construction sector suffered by 50% & Mfg. by 39%

Yearly budgeted fiscal deficit target reached 4 months with 8 more months to go

Only positive, agriculture grew 3.4% 

Covid infection is still spiking, no sign of reversal, situation still volatile

The downturn had extended into JAS 2020 quarter now

These input are from the formal economy. Informal sector activities are severely impacted across India, situation is even worse. 

MSME, a veritable force of Indian economy, is in shambles, many are still closed or functioning @ fractional capacity. 

Wage income came down sharper than GDP due to unemployment and falling wages. 

The Staes are suffering the most as the Centre is denying them GST compensation, faulty GST policy implementation?

States had spent all its money for pandemic fighting, left with no cash to spend, while undergoing fiscal policy restrictions on their revenue raising powers

How will the government and its leaders help the country come out of the maladies? 

राम जाने, pray, 🙏!