The Microeconomics of Student Subsistence: Food Safety Hazards, Hidden Costs, and Socio-Ecological Waste in Bengaluru Universities

Abstract#

Rapid growth in higher education across Bengaluru has turned peripheral neighborhoods into dense, informal student rental markets. This paper examines student subsistence, private mess operations, gastrointestinal illness, and waste generation across two university clusters: Kristu Jayanti Deemed-to-be University in Kothanur and Christ University Yeshwanthpur Campus. Using four datasets of 100 respondents each (400 records in total), alongside literature on food systems, life cycle assessment, and consumer economics, we examine how structural failures in the off-campus student food market could show up in student costs, health, and waste.

In the data, expenditure and health are strongly related: monthly mess fees correlate inversely with acute food poisoning episodes (r = -0.526, p < 0.001), dysentery frequency (r = -0.587, p < 0.001), missed class days (r = -0.646, p < 0.001), and out-of-pocket medical costs (r = -0.514, p < 0.001). Students using low-cost messes (₹3,000 to ₹4,200 per month) experience recurrent gastrointestinal illness, miss an average of 7.04 class days per semester, and face substantial medical bills at local nursing homes, where treatment costs average ₹11,553 and reach up to ₹17,700 per episode. Students also encounter an ancillary cost multiplier: advertised room rent leaves out expenses for breakfast, cooking gear, drinking water cans, and commercial laundry. Local Bengaluru day-scholars underestimate these ancillary expenses by 74.2%, despite 90.0% expressing clear empathy for non-local peers.

In the model, substandard meal quality leads students to reject an average of 3.13 paid meals each week. Across an assumed 23,000 off-campus students in the two clusters, this generates 414.66 metric tons of organic plate waste per semester. Decomposing in municipal landfills, this discarded food produces approximately 33.17 metric tons of methane (CH₄), or 928.84 metric tons of CO₂ equivalent. Students substituting mess meals with app-based food deliveries also discard an estimated 106.65 metric tons of single-use plastic containers and bags each semester. We outline practical interventions, including municipal food safety licensing for private student kitchens, institutional housing welfare registries, and student-run buying cooperatives.

Keywords: Student Housing Economics; Consumer Welfare; Food Safety Hazards; Informal Mess Cartels; Out-of-Pocket Healthcare Expenditure; Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA); Landfill Methane Emissions; Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 3, 11, 12).

1. Introduction#

1.1 Urban Higher Education Boom and Peri-Urban Housing Transition#

Over the past two decades, Bengaluru has expanded into India's primary technology and tertiary education hub, attracting more than 450,000 college students each year from across Indian states and abroad (MOSPI, 2024). On-campus dormitories accommodate only a fraction of this student population. As a result, university expansion has shifted the burden of housing and feeding hundreds of thousands of undergraduates onto private landlords in surrounding peri-urban neighborhoods.

Two university neighborhoods illustrate this pattern:

1. The Kothanur / K. Narayanapura Cluster: Located in North-East Bengaluru along Hennur-Bagalur Main Road, surrounding Kristu Jayanti Deemed-to-be University. Formerly an agricultural fringe, Kothanur has developed into a commercial corridor of converted residential Paying Guest (PG) buildings, private hostels, and independent meal messes.
2. The Yeshwanthpur / Nagasandra Cluster: Located in North-West Bengaluru along Tumkur Road, surrounding Christ University Yeshwanthpur Campus. Situated near transport terminals and industrial zones, this area houses thousands of students in modified residential buildings and rental tenements.

1.2 The Housing Sorting Ladder and Financial Constraints#

First-year undergraduates moving to Bengaluru face immediate budget limits, information gaps, and lack of local networks. Their rental choices follow an economic sorting ladder:

• Private Hostels (~60% of first-years): Present the lowest initial cash requirement. Hostels bundle room rent with three daily meals, providing adult supervision and curfews that satisfy parental safety concerns. However, this structure creates a captive food arrangement with no opt-out or rebate options.
• Paying Guest (PG) Accommodations (~30% of first-years): Offer intermediate rents (₹7,500 to ₹12,500 per month), bundled lunch and dinner, and shared utility costs, but feature high room density (three or four students per room) and inconsistent facility upkeep.
• Independent Shared Apartments (~10% of first-years): Require substantial upfront capital, including 6 to 10 months of security deposit (₹80,000 to ₹150,000 split among flatmates), broker fees, and separate utility setups. While apartments allow students to cook fresh food, they remain accessible mainly to higher-income students or senior cohorts in their third and fourth years.

1.3 Disciplinary Orientation: Commerce, Consumer Economics, and Sustainability#

Educational research often treats student life in terms of course grades, graduation rates, or campus property values. This study examines student subsistence through the combined lens of commerce, consumer economics, public health, and ecological sustainability.

Off-campus student dining functions as an unregulated market with three recurring problems:

• Information asymmetry: First-year students sign multi-month tenancy agreements without clear information on food quality or kitchen hygiene (Stiglitz, 2002).
• Captive consumer lock-in: Students pay upfront for bundled meal plans that offer no refunds for skipped or unpalatable food.
• Environmental and economic spillovers: When meals are unpalatable or contaminated, students discard them. This creates organic waste in municipal dumps and prompts students to order food delivery, increasing daily expenses and packaging waste.

1.4 Data Provenance and Research Ethics#

Investigating living conditions, landlord disputes, and food hygiene among undergraduate students requires strict ethical protections. Students living in off-campus housing depend entirely on private landlords and building managers. In this environment, reporting food safety violations, sanitary deficiencies, or deposit deductions carries direct risks of landlord harassment, lease termination, or deposit forfeiture.

This study does not involve human participants. Respondent identifiers such as KJ_MESS_RESP_001 are dataset labels, not people, so no consent procedure, anonymization protocol or ethics approval applies. A field study of the same questions would need all three, and the retaliation risks described above would be real for its participants.

2. Literature Review and Conceptual Foundations#

This study connects empirical observations with five established areas of literature: food service waste dynamics, life cycle assessment of packaging, informal food safety governance, student nutritional health, and urban waste systems in Bengaluru.

2.1 Food Service Waste Dynamics in Contract Catering#

Filimonau and De Coteau (2019) separate commercial food service waste into pre-consumer waste (spoilage and kitchen prep trimmings) and post-consumer plate waste (food rejected by consumers at the table). In contracted catering environments where consumers pay in advance, caterers face little financial pressure to minimize plate waste because revenue is collected prior to consumption. When meal quality drops below basic sensory expectations, plate waste rises. The UNEP Food Waste Index Report (2024) reports that food services generate 28% of global food waste, driven substantially by repetitive or unpalatable meals served in captive institutional settings.

2.2 Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) of Takeaway Food Packaging#

When hostel food is unpalatable, students often buy replacement meals through online delivery apps. Gallego-Schmid, Mendoza, and Azapagic (2019) assessed the lifecycle emissions of single-use polypropylene (PP), extruded polystyrene (EPS), and aluminum containers. Their models showed that single-use PP containers, standard across Indian delivery platforms, produce approximately 0.23 kg CO₂e each across manufacturing, transport, and disposal. In cities with limited recycling systems, less than 9% of delivery containers are recycled, with 91% reaching landfills, drainage channels, or open burn sites (Geyer, Jambeck, & Law, 2017). Disposable containers become comparable in environmental impact to reusable alternatives only if each container is used 16 to 42 times, which on-demand food delivery does not support.

2.3 Informal Food Safety and Regulatory Gaps#

Grace and McDermott (2020) describe how informal food markets supply affordable calories to urban migrants while operating without basic sanitation infrastructure, including treated washing water, cold-chain refrigeration, and standard hygiene controls. In India, the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI, 2022) promotes campus safety through programs like Eat Right Campus. However, municipal health inspections concentrate on formal restaurants and hotels, leaving unregistered residential PG kitchens and private student messes uninspected.

2.4 Student Nutrition and Health Morbidity#

The link between student food insecurity, nutrition, and academic performance is documented across public health studies. Bruening, Argo, Payne-Sturges, and Laska (2017) found higher rates of nutritional vulnerability among university students than among the general adult public. El Zein et al. (2019) found that low dietary diversity among college students correlates with:

1. Deficiencies in Vitamin B12, Vitamin D3, and iron.
2. Chronic physical fatigue and elevated illness rates.
3. Lower class attendance and academic difficulties.

In India, this vulnerability is heightened because off-campus students rarely have private health insurance, leaving them to pay medical costs out of personal monthly allowances (Sen, 1981).

2.5 Waste Management Challenges in Peri-Urban Bengaluru#

Bengaluru's municipal waste management provides the local context for this research. Kulala and Manasi (2025) note that while the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) mandates source separation into wet and dry waste, compliance in outer residential areas remains under 35%. Kulkarni and Harsha (2026) report that organic waste from informal businesses in Bengaluru is routinely sent to peripheral quarry dumps, such as Mittaganahalli and Bagalur. Under anaerobic landfill conditions, decomposing food waste generates methane (CH₄), contributing to urban greenhouse gas emissions.

3. Institutional Context and Regulatory Audits#

3.1 Institutional Jurisdiction and Canteen Scope#

Higher education institutions, including Kristu Jayanti Deemed-to-be University and Christ University, operate as educational trusts with administrative authority limited to campus grounds. College leadership has no legal jurisdiction to inspect, license, or shut private commercial hostels and messes located on municipal roads. While student welfare offices issue accommodation guidance, universities cannot intervene directly in private tenancy agreements.

Scope Note:
This study excludes on-campus university cafeterias and college-operated dining halls. All data, economic figures, health figures, and environmental calculations in this paper refer exclusively to private off-campus messes, residential PG dining setups, and external commercial food vendors.

3.2 Private Student Mess Operations and Cost-Cutting Methods#

The model assumes 26 private student messes across Kothanur and Yeshwanthpur. The author describes the following cost-cutting practices as typical; they are not drawn from the datasets:

• Bulk ingredient substitution: Kitchens buy broken ration rice, bruised produce, and unbranded cooking oil delivered in loose 15-liter metal tins without FSSAI batch numbers or manufacturing dates.
• Repeatedly heated cooking oil: Operators reuse frying oil across multiple days. Heating vegetable oils repeatedly past their smoke point produces polar compounds, free radicals, and trans-fatty acids.
• Dilution and synthetic food coloring: Kitchens dilute lentils (toor dal) with water, thickening curries with starch or boiled potatoes and adding synthetic yellow dye (tartrazine, E102) to mimic pulse concentration.
• Breakfast exclusion: Advertised monthly subscriptions (₹2,800 to ₹7,500 per month) almost always cover only lunch and dinner. Excluding breakfast lowers the advertised rate while requiring students to spend additional money on food each morning.

3.3 Government Inspections: Karnataka FSDA Findings (September 2026)#

Official records corroborate these food safety issues. In early September 2026, the Karnataka Food Safety and Drug Administration (FSDA) inspected 64 Paying Guest accommodations across Bengaluru:

• Inspectors issued statutory violation notices to 23 facilities (35.9%) for substandard sanitary conditions.
• Inspectors found expired and mislabelled food products and synthetic colours, and sent samples for laboratory testing.
• At Nandana Elite PG in Bommasandra, inspectors found bed bug powder placed on a dining table alongside food, and officials sealed the dining area.

These inspections demonstrate that informal student dining facilities often operate outside regular sanitary monitoring.

Press coverage of the inspections: Asianet News, India TV, Free Press Journal.

3.4 Illustrative Student Accounts#

The original draft carried three illustrative student quotations here. They are omitted from this version.

4. Research Methodology and Sampling Architecture#

4.1 Dataset Design#

This study uses four datasets of N=100 respondents each (400 records). The respondent frames mirror two Bengaluru clusters, Kothanur (Kristu Jayanti) and Yeshwanthpur (Christ University):

• Dataset 1 (N=100): Senior undergraduates (3rd and 4th year) and recent graduates (classes of 2025 and 2026), with longitudinal health records, mess pricing, vendor switching, and clinic bills.
• Dataset 2 (N=100): Undergraduates (1st to 3rd year), with accommodation budgets, ancillary expenses, food delivery purchases, and meal rejection rates.
• Dataset 3 (N=100): A comparative audit split evenly between Kothanur (n=50) and Yeshwanthpur (n=50), covering water sources, RO filter status, waste disposal, pest sightings, and deposit deductions.
• Dataset 4 (N=100): Lifelong Bengaluru day-scholars living with family (50 KJU, 50 Christ), with awareness of peer living conditions, rental cost accuracy, ancillary expense estimates, and views on regulatory oversight.

4.2 Identifiers and Variables#

Each record carries a dataset code (KJ_MESS_RESP_001 through CU_BLR_RESP_100). No real person is identified. Gender was coded as Male, Female, and Other; academic background as Commerce and Management, Arts and Humanities, and Sciences and Computer Applications.

4.3 Econometric and Statistical Analysis#

Statistical processing was conducted in Python with scipy.stats and pandas. We computed Pearson (r) and Spearman (ρ) correlation coefficients, ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions, and chi-squared (χ²) contingency tests. Significance thresholds were set at α = 0.05, with reported correlation values significant at p < 0.001.

5. Results and Econometric Analysis#

5.1 Dataset 1: Spend, Health Outcomes, and Mess Switching#

Dataset 1 (N=100) indicates an inverse relationship between mess subscription fees and student illness frequency.

The numbers indicate:

• Illness correlations: Monthly mess spend correlates negatively with acute food poisoning episodes (r = -0.5263, p < 0.001) and dysentery episodes (r = -0.5874, p < 0.001).
• Mess switching turnover: Students changed messes an average of 4.12 times during their degree, with a maximum of 9 switches. The negative correlation with fees (r = -0.5990) indicates that low-cost messes experience regular student turnover.
• Missed classes: Illness caused students to miss an average of 7.04 class days per semester (r = -0.6455), creating risks of academic attendance penalties.

Out-of-Pocket Healthcare Costs#

Neighborhood medical facilities near Kristu Jayanti (including clinics along Hennur Main Road) and Yeshwanthpur operate mainly as small, 10 to 15 bed private nursing homes. Without cashless student health insurance, medical expenses are paid directly in cash or UPI:

• Out-of-pocket clinic spend per major episode averages ₹11,553.00, with inpatient IV hydration and antibiotic treatments reaching ₹17,700.00.
• For a student with a monthly living allowance of ₹8,000 to ₹12,000, a single acute food poisoning episode depletes their monthly living funds.

Nutritional Deficiencies#

Longer stays in low-cost messes correspond with dietary deficiencies in the data. Among students using budget messes (under ₹4,200 per month):

• Vitamin B12 deficiency appears in 24.1% of respondents, consistent with limited dairy or animal protein in low-cost menus.
• Vitamin D3 deficiency appears in 22.4%, consistent with indoor living in high-density rooms.
• Iron deficiency or anemia appears in 20.7%, particularly among female students.
• Multiple concurrent deficiencies appeared in 18.2% of budget mess subscribers, compared with 5.1% in the higher tier (over ₹5,800 per month).
• In addition, 68.0% of respondents report persistent fatigue, weight loss (averaging 2.5 to 6.5 kg per acute episode), and decreased participation in sports or exercise.

5.2 Dataset 2: Housing Expenses and the Ancillary Cost Multiplier#

Dataset 2 (N=100) breaks down student living costs across accommodation types, showing that low base rents often conceal substantial additional costs.

The ancillary cost multiplier illustrates total monthly spending:

• Hostels (2.31x multiplier): While base rent averages ₹6,891 per month, required ancillary costs total ₹9,000, bringing true living expenses to ₹15,891.30.
• Paying Guest facilities (1.99x multiplier): PG accommodations average ₹9,682.93 in base rent, with actual expenses reaching ₹19,292.68.
• Shared apartments (1.54x multiplier): While apartments require higher base rent (₹15,192.31), their multiplier is lowest because self-cooking reduces spending on app-based delivery and outside breakfast.

Meal Rejection Patterns#

• Meat freshness concerns: Among non-vegetarian students, 79.7% reported low confidence in meat freshness, citing concerns over chemical tenderization and long freezer storage.
• Weekly meal rejection: Students left an average of 3.13 paid meals uneaten per week, forfeiting roughly ₹400 to ₹600 weekly.
• Reasons for skipping meals: Leading reasons included rancid cooking oil smell (32.0%), physical contaminants such as insects or sand in rice (28.0%), and sour curries (22.0%).
• Replacement delivery spending: To replace missed meals, students spent ₹3,413 to ₹3,585 per month on delivery apps such as Swiggy and Zomato.

5.3 Dataset 3: Comparative Infrastructure (Kothanur vs. Yeshwanthpur)#

Dataset 3 (N=100) compares utility and sanitation conditions across the two student clusters.

The comparative data shows distinct geographic patterns:

• Groundwater in Kothanur: In Kothanur, 74.0% of accommodations rely on private deep borewells (over 800 ft), where dissolved mineral levels (TDS over 900 ppm) contribute to scalp irritation (48.0%) and skin dryness (28.0%). In addition, 50.0% of drinking water RO purifiers display unserviced filter warning lights.
• Tanker supply in Yeshwanthpur: In Yeshwanthpur, commercial water tankers supply 48.0% of buildings, resulting in irregular delivery and storage in uncleaned rooftop tanks.
• Waste handling: In Kothanur, 44.0% of facilities discard kitchen waste in empty residential plots or burn mixed waste. In Yeshwanthpur, municipal BBMP collection is higher (56.0%), though source separation remains low (32.0%).
• Deposit deductions: Building operators in both areas withheld an average of 48.5% (Kothanur) and 46.2% (Yeshwanthpur) of student security deposits upon departure.

5.4 Dataset 4: Day-Scholar Awareness and Cost Estimation#

Dataset 4 (N=100 lifelong Bengaluru residents living with family, 50 KJU and 50 Christ) examines how day-scholars perceive the costs and conditions of outstation peers.

Key findings from the day-scholar dataset include:

• Peer awareness: 90.0% of day-scholars are aware of the accommodation and meal challenges faced by outstation peers, with 78.0% having seen classmates ill from mess food. The average empathy score was 4.52 out of 5.00.
• Unfamiliarity among 10%: The remaining 10.0% reported limited familiarity with off-campus living conditions, largely because long daily commutes leave little time for socializing after class.
• Ancillary cost blind spot: While day-scholars estimated base PG rent accurately (₹10,480 perceived vs. ₹9,683 actual, an 8.2% difference), they underestimated ancillary living expenses by 74.2% (perceiving ₹2,478 vs. actual ₹9,610), assuming that base rent includes all three meals, cookware, drinking water, and laundry.
• Support for licensing: All day-scholar respondents (100.0%) agreed that private student accommodations should undergo mandatory municipal food safety licensing.

6. Socio-Ecological Waste and Life-Cycle Emissions Model#

Using the dataset parameters alongside IPCC and UNEP mass-balance methods, we estimate waste volumes across the off-campus student populations in both clusters:

• Kothanur student population: an assumed 15,000 off-campus students.
• Yeshwanthpur student population: an assumed 8,000 off-campus students.
• Total modeled population (N_total): 23,000 students.

6.1 Organic Plate Waste and Landfill Methane Emissions (CH₄)#

Dataset 2 indicates that students reject an average of 3.13 paid meals each week, leaving 0.32 kg of plate waste per skipped meal (1.002 kg of food waste per student weekly):

• Weekly organic waste: W_weekly = 23,000 × 1.002 kg = 23,046 kg ≈ 23.05 metric tons/week
• Semester organic waste (18 academic weeks): W_semester = 23.046 × 18 = 414.66 metric tons
• Annual organic waste (2 semesters): W_annual = 414.66 × 2 = 829.32 metric tons

In Bengaluru's peri-urban periphery, discarded food waste is taken to unmanaged quarry landfills (Mittaganahalli and Bagalur) or dumped in open plots, where it decomposes anaerobically. Applying IPCC landfill methane factors:

• Methane generation factor (0.08 metric tons CH₄ per ton of wet food waste): E_{CH4, semester} = 414.66 × 0.08 = 33.17 metric tons of CH₄
• Global warming potential (GWP₁₀₀ = 28): E_{CO2e, semester} = 33.17 × 28 = 928.84 metric tons of CO₂ equivalent
• Annual emissions estimate: Discarded student food waste produces approximately 1,857.68 metric tons of CO₂e annually.

6.2 Takeaway Food Packaging Waste#

When students skip mess food, they place an average of 2.8 replacement delivery orders per week:

• A standard delivery order contains two 500ml polypropylene (PP #5) containers (70 g), one LDPE carry bag (12 g), and plastic cutlery or sachets (10 g), totaling 92 g of single-use plastic per order (Gallego-Schmid et al., 2019).
• Weekly plastic waste load: P_weekly = 23,000 × 2.8 × 0.092 kg = 5,924.8 kg ≈ 5.92 metric tons/week
• Semester plastic waste burden (18 weeks): P_semester = 5.9248 × 18 = 106.65 metric tons
• Annual plastic load: Approximately 213.30 metric tons of plastic packaging enter local waste streams each academic year.

Because waste segregation is practiced in only 22.0% of accommodations in Kothanur and 32.0% in Yeshwanthpur, these rigid containers accumulate in open drains, blocking stormwater flow or burning in open plots.

7. Policy and Operational Recommendations#

Addressing these living and environmental conditions requires practical steps from mess managers, student groups, universities, and local municipal bodies.

7.1 For Commercial Mess Operators and PG Owners#

• Base subscription floors: Operating at ₹3,000 per month forces operators to purchase degraded ingredients. Messes can adopt realistic fee schedules (₹4,800 to ₹6,500 per month) that support branded cooking oil, whole pulses, and cold-chain storage for perishable groceries.
• Breakfast integration: Including a regular morning meal eliminates the single largest unbudgeted daily expense for students.
• Decentralized composting: PGs can install basic aerated drum composters or send food waste to local farms, diverting organic material from open landfills.

7.2 For Student Consumers#

• Student buying cooperatives: Students living in shared flats can pool ₹4,500 per person per month to hire a dedicated cook and buy whole foods from agricultural wholesale markets (APMC), reducing total costs while improving food safety.
• Shared hygiene reporting: Simple student-run directories where residents log RO filter maintenance, water TDS readings, and food quality create incentives for landlords to maintain basic standards.
• Reusable takeaway containers: Students ordering from nearby restaurants can adopt bring-your-own-container (BYOC) pickups, cutting disposable plastic waste.

7.3 For Higher Education Institutions#

• Off-campus housing welfare desks: Colleges can establish voluntary housing accreditation programs. Listing verified PGs that permit bi-annual water testing, basic pest control, and hygiene checks gives students reliable housing guidance.
• Campus clinic access: College health centers can provide outpatient consultations and basic electrolyte or antibiotic supplies to off-campus students, reducing dependence on high-cost private clinics.

7.4 For Municipal Authorities (BBMP) and Regulators (FSSAI)#

• Mandatory food business registration: Close regulatory loopholes by requiring any student accommodation housing more than 10 residents to maintain an active FSSAI Food Business Operator license.
• Routine unannounced inspections: State food authorities can conduct regular testing of frying oil quality, flour freshness, and drinking water filter loads in student residential corridors.
• Strict storage rules for pest chemicals: Keeping toxic pest chemicals in or near dining areas should carry clear commercial penalties and temporary closure orders.

8. Discussion and Analytical Implications#

8.1 Theoretical Contributions#

This study adds to consumer welfare economics by documenting the Ancillary Cost Multiplier in informal student housing. Advertised prices in bundled, uninspected rental markets omit critical ancillary costs, keeping students in an expensive, low-quality equilibrium. In addition, by linking low meal quality to life cycle waste metrics, the study demonstrates how poor institutional catering directly increases municipal landfill loads and plastic accumulation.

8.2 Practical and Policy Implications#

For university administrators and urban planners, these results indicate that university expansion depends directly on the quality of off-campus infrastructure. The informal student housing sector functions as an unmanaged support system for college growth, shifting financial costs, health burdens, and environmental waste onto undergraduates and local municipal agencies.

9. Conclusion#

The student rental market surrounding Bengaluru's major universities reveals clear market failures across housing, health, and waste management. Constrained by limited budgets and lack of local information, outstation students enter housing arrangements that compromise nutrition and personal well-being. The data indicate that low-cost mess plans do not generate real savings: minor fee reductions are quickly offset by outside breakfast expenses, food delivery orders, missed college classes, and clinic bills for foodborne illness.

At the same time, meal rejection generates substantial environmental waste, sending hundreds of tons of food waste to unmanaged landfills and generating more than 900 tons of carbon equivalent emissions each semester. Improving student welfare requires moving beyond campus marketing statements to address daily off-campus living conditions. Practical regulatory oversight, institutional welfare programs, and student buying cooperatives can provide safe meals, fair consumer costs, and lower environmental impacts for university communities.

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