Welcome back to the breakfast on plus TV Africa. It's time for us to review the big stories on the front pages of a national dailies and As usual, we do have a guest who will be joining the conversation is Zika. Yeah, I talk public affairs analysts Thank you. It's Zika. Yeah, I took for joining us this morning So always a pleasure. I'm always happy to be on plus TV Africa. Thanks for having me All right, we're sort of with the leadership newspaper this morning and on the front page of the leadership newspaper 2022 budget defense Senate rejects 287 billion narrow loan requests for water projects So it probably might just feel like it's a season where the Senate is rejecting a lot and you know It's expected because it should be an oversight function of you know, the Senate 2022 budget defense Senate rejects 287 billion loan requests for water projects and It's boldly written on the front page of the leadership newspaper. You find more details on page four Summons minister says no visible result for previous loans You also have a rider saying approves 1000 narrow daily feeding for prisoners Away from the board caption. You also have Nigeria's oil reserve to last for 49 years says World Bank That's also on page four of the leadership newspaper this morning now still looking at the front page of the leadership You also have another headline saying Niger's population growing by five million annually the vice president is quoted on page six and NNPC to fix 21 federal roads at 621.2 billion narrow It's also another interesting caption on page six of the leadership newspaper and just as we progress you also find cop freezes Benway Bank accounts over 333 million narrow debts that's on page seven talking about the people's democratic convention Anxiety grips PDP as court rules today the case of Prince Uche second is You also have another caption saying we're not opposed to autonomy for Judy showy That's what the governors are saying or really That's also another interesting caption and that's on Page six as well of the leadership newspaper if you pick up a copy you get all of the information Now away from the leadership I'd like to check out the nation newspaper this morning on the front page of the nation newspaper you have governor's lobby senators and reps against direct primaries Quite different from what the leadership is reporting Governor's lobby senators and reps against direct primaries. It's a broad caption You find we have gone far with electoral act amendment says Senate spokesman you also have I pop threads or Hanay's a calls for urgent political solution Hours after launch in our app down on Google's play store. I Have a lot of persons who are complaining that you can't find the in our Updown to Google play store. I remember the conversation we had on this platform and we said the issue of acceptability and adaptability and walkability is a major concern with this particular development and number 2021 you have Why I want to be governor by soludo. I neck free to transmit Paul result electronically find who's saying all of that ADC candidate unveils a model that's what you also find and UK versatility says The Paris museum return looted artifact to Nigeria says There's a plan to return the artifact to Nigeria That's a good one You find all of the information on page 22 of the nation newspaper this morning I'd move away from the nation newspaper and quickly check out the daily Independent newspaper this morning and find out what big stories we have on the daily independent now the board caption Quite different from what you have on the nation and on the leadership newspaper NNPC gets approval to fix 21 federal roads at 621.2 billion narrow NNPC gets approval to fix 21 federal roads at 621.2 billion era You have the federal executive council or case for billion for transmission line and substation in Anambra and in Nougu all of that you find on the front page of the daily independent newspaper this morning and Away from the board caption Anambra guba pole or Hanayzee urges I pop to cancel seven days sit at home other Now there's been a lot of reaction. There's been a lot of talks where you find stakeholders Advising that there should be some form of dialogue We hope that this actually ends very well act south is governor's to convene Emergency stakeholders meeting we will recover from attacks on our facilities I NEC is quoted on all of that ahead of the Anambra elections slated for the 6th of November and Senate rejects Buhari's 700 million dollar loan requests and someone's minister that's on page four Stop using security or paratives to intimidate jerges the governor of river state Yes, I'm we K tells the federal government and that's on page five Strike sharing formula of twenty two point one billion and allowances Brewing crisis in varsities and that's on page five You have the affair Baba Lola multi system performs first kidney transplant is quite commendable and that's on page five PDP convention last-minute effort to dissuade Seconders fails as our peer rules today That's also another caption you find under daily independent newspaper this morning and federal government puts the Ziane's property for sale That's on page two of the daily independent smugglers attack customs officer Kill one and another missing really really sad That's it on the daily independent. They are more interesting headlines I'm sure you pick up a copy to get all of the information Now, let's move away from that and check out the daily trust newspaper this morning and he says or Hanay's a begs iPop for peace as federal government insist on anambra elections That might just be dominating the stories on the front pages this morning make pulling unit accessible national assembly tells service chiefs We are fully prepared. I know chairman is quoted. Don't take iPops tweth lightly XI GP tells federal government Currency swap Niger banks to begin operation in China. That's what the envoy is quoted to say and You also have another interesting headline saying Cut freezes Bainway accounts over 300 and 33 million are alone Despite initial opposition Benway undo other state once federal government for ranches And that's also another caption on the daily trust newspaper this morning Well, that's the much that we can take on the front pages of our national dailies Let's head back to Ezekiel. Yeah, I took a ZKL. Yeah, I took it's good to have you join us once again on the segment Thanks for having me. All right, so let's start off with The caption on the leadership newspaper again the Senate rejects 287 billion narrow loan for that's a request for water projects. I would like to quickly share your thoughts on that Do I call it a refreshing welcome pleasant surprise so to speak because Senate seems to be of the opinion that anything that comes from the executive should go But I think maybe they're drawing a line now between the ministries and then the presidency because it seems everything that comes from the presidency goes but this is becoming from any of the MDAs and Again, I like the The excuse they gave or the reason I would rather call it reason they gave in the sense that they said what we gave you in the past We've not seen results. So why do you want another one when the the one that we gave before we've not seen results Which means that they are saying they are oversight function over the ministry is Is what they can boast of and from what they can boast of they can see why they should give you any more Money, I think this is a welcome relief to Nigerians generally because this issue of anything that comes from the presidency goes I think it has it's taking a bad toll on Nigerians and them I'm very happy they can do this. It means that they are probably are scrutinizing the budget So I think that the time has come when the Senate should do more of this I commend them and I agree with them completely and besides when you look at the details of what is needed And what is to be applied and things like that. You realize that People just go getting funds. They don't think there's this is a general mindset about Getting money in government. Did they see it as what you can while you can and not that Complete picture of the future and the destiny of a nation and that anything you borrow should be Specific and not only that having the mindset that a debt is something that must be Repaid so you don't take money like I was talking to a group of young people yesterday. I said when you go to borrow Don't borrow 21,000 when you need 20,000 Even if they can approve 21,000 don't borrow 24 would if you need 20,000 your borrowing must always be need based and rip based on Repayment plan and the time and don't think that the future will not go back to the past It sounds contradictory, but the future has a way of going back to the past Let me tell you something and I say this authoritatively one day in this country People will be called back Answer what they did while they were in office. He can take five years can take ten years and even take 15 years So everybody in office must think tomorrow What you will not want to be called back as an old man to answer be careful not to do it Don't think that the way that you've left office. It has gone. No So I think if we have that mindset will be a lot more circumspect in the decisions we take while in office We'll still stay with the leadership newspaper this morning another interesting headline is about the confusion And the anxiety that is ongoing with the People's Democratic Party today. There will be a caught ruling and There seem to be a lot of Feelings right now with the People's Democratic Party. What do you really make of this? I think it's a political game that is coming home to bite the the PDP unfortunately second just had some months to go and In the convention in getting hold of the leadership of the party I think there was this Unfortunate issue where they felt the leader to take hold on the National Convention and then by right It's actually the national chairman that sets up the systems and structures for national convention And because it's a national convention that would lead to the leadership or setting up the systems for 2023 Which is mega the governors and the leaders who were not happy with Secundus felt they needed to get him out of the way and they took on as a style that Secundus I Don't know I have my reservations But while I'm not too happy or while it's not too fair to what they tried to do to him If you love the party and you care about the party is sometimes you may need to also bend over backwards to accept certain things So that the party can move forward But I think that they've come to a position now where the battle line has been drawn as at now They have very last what I would call the very last Option which is supposed to come up today and that option is whether The the the the the court Would grant their request and if the court says the convention goes on then they are lucky They have no more problems, but if for any reason in the world The court says no you can have your convention. It means that by now they should have developed plan B So it's up to them whether they are that proactive or not, but whichever way it comes. There's There's this anxiety within PDP and how they saw it out is up to how ingenious they can be I don't think that starts for us to break our heads here They will sort it out one word or the other But the easiest thing they could have done was just to get into political Solution with the second is and then he probably would withdraw the case But maybe they take a chance and they believe that it would go in their favor and if it goes in their favor Then second this would have lost out completely not only by the convention going on But with the future of the party he would be seen as one who is defeated and one should not have a lot to discuss with him Hmm, but they are also reports saying that efforts has been made to dissuade him But it feels like it's not yielding any positive result But like you have rightly mentioned that is entirely their concern. However, let's see how things pan out But I would also look at another still on the leadership Nigerian population growing by five million annually that's what the vice president is good at to see and just the in 2021 you have the United Nations saying the Nigerian population is about 211 we're looking at 211 million peasants if I'm not mistaken So what do you make of the fact that we are growing by five million annually? I mean some persons will say What was the last time we had a population census? How do we come up with these figures? Do we have some formulas that we come up with all of the statistics the very first thing is the last issue that you raised Exactly, what is our population? We live in a country where there's so much mysteries around virtually everything and it doesn't make sense and it is understandable why it has to be so because revenue sharing is based on not productivity, but on You know such nebulous things like like population population is supposed to aid in planning Knowing the number of people that you have helps you to know the Social infrastructure that you must make provision for it helps you to know how to plan to meet the needs Head, which is very important and the essence of government and governance But unfortunately, we do not think of it that way for us Population and planning is about sharing money and when you talk in terms of sharing money people are going to count fowls and dogs and cows and all and have give you Inflated figures you are going to tell you that there's thick population where you really don't expect it to be and that there's lighter population Exactly, what is the population of Nigeria when you are on air and you are traveling from one part of this country to the other And you see the places that people inhabit. You just ask yourself. Are we really honest with ourselves? So as on a very very personal note I have a lot of reservation a lot of personal Reservation and I think that the day we change is sharing formula from you know population to Productivity which is why people are talking terms of resource control by the time that you are doing the resources of your state Why do you think that? Governments are now going into ghost workers Why because they know that they've got to pay these people and that these people are not really Existence so we gotta weed them out because they're going to spend their money to pay the workers Then I'll say we don't want ghost workers now when you have a situation where You are going to get resources and then deploy your resources to meet the people You are going to find the need for you to have the proper population of each step If God blesses me and I become the governor of my state the first thing I'll do is run my own population Do you understand me and Know exactly the number of people that I have The number of heads per location and that will help me to plan the proper infrastructure or social infrastructure For such locations for such people and I think that every government But when the governors are afraid to do that because they don't want to expose their real numbers and at the end of the day get less Please forget the the center Do the proper thing and then at the end of the day You'll be the better for it because your people will get exactly what they want Where they need it and how they need it that to me is what governance is all about all this fake thing that we do of being Very very deceitful the more deceitful you are as a nation the less productive you can be and the less competitive That is why we have unfortunately end ourselves that in noble a tag of being there the poverty capital of the world India is about seven times our population and yet we have more poor people than India Isn't that just something that should make us bury our heads in shame? I do not blame the politicians I think the time has come when we that call ourselves the elite should rise to defend this To help this nation to redefine politics and governance to get involved join any party you wish I don't care That's my take on this but let's move away from that now and check out the nation newspaper You have governors lobby senators and reps against direct primaries Why do you think got governors are lobbying this senators against direct primaries? I mean there's a lot of positives positive arguments for Direct primaries, and I'm sure that that's why you have the lawmakers saying political parties should opt for direct primaries People need to understand what direct primaries and indirect primaries is Then they will understand why governors will do everything possible to make sure that there is nothing Like direct primaries in direct primaries almost have the list of The delegates come from the governors They decide who should be the delegates these are largely his appointees So he brings them together. He has absolute control of the machinery So if he doesn't want you to be a Candidate you can never emerge as a candidate. That's number one on the other hand Indirect primaries goes back to every member of the party These members of the party decide So it becomes very difficult for any of the governors to have direct hold on members of the party It becomes easier for anybody who is popular amongst the the party members To win the ticket. So it's like taking the power directly from the control of the governors The governors don't have you know that sweeping as a matter of fact a lot of governors are not liked by the people a lot of Governors they emerged as governors not because they are Acceptable, but because they were imposed on the people So when you want to in fact a governor's candidate is a direct failure Abinacea before before you even start in direct primaries and The governors that's why the the National Assembly members Who know that they are not in good terms with their governors? Would rather go for direct primaries because they are the people who have been doing things for the You know for for their party members while they were in office So they had created a bond with your party members, but this same party members Literally lost the governors. So if you go for direct primaries It's benefits the members of the National Assembly while it disenfranchises the governors That is why they are unanimous in agreeing that they should be in direct primaries And then the governors are now, you know, bearing their fans and say, you know, you've got to reverse that They are threatening we will not give you tickets But how can you say you know give me a ticket when you don't even have a ticket in direct primaries Governors don't have a ticket it's about the people, you know The only difference in this case is that long before now systems and structures should have been put in place I did an open letter to the National Chairman of INEC and I think they should revisit I was a national chairman of a party So I understand the dynamics and everything that is going on and I did that Party membership is right now so fluid that it's difficult a man can actually vote in three or four parties You can belong to three or four parties But I did a memo to the National Chairman of INEC, which I wish he had adopted that that would have been fantastic You have membership in three categories. You have, you know members with PVC who are paying members that Active members you have members with PVC who have not paid their dues as be you have people Who may even be juniors minors as C? So this financially active members with PVC will be the people that can vote in primaries This ones that have PVC, but do not have do not pay You know will not vote that encourages every party member to be financially active That now brings money to the parties and parties can run Independent of Godfather's and systems. That's just the most simple and beautiful and basic thing If you don't want to vote on primaries, no problem You can stay away, but if you know you want to vote become active paying my members And that's just a token that they pay maybe 500 maybe a thousand per year something Minimal by the time you do that everybody wants to vote so they look for money and pay the party has money They can now run independent of God knows independent of Godfather's independent of money, but that's when you start to have parties Then the third category can even be which I said you don't have PVC and you can even be junior even secondary school You can have junior members of the party people should grow into the ideology of the party from secondary schools You know into you know adults would or full membership of the party once you do this very simple thing It becomes very easy for you to know the membership of the party and to do direct primaries Which can even do online at the time like this on their primaries All you need is systems and structures that can capture that and need to be done All right, there's also another interesting headline on the nation newspaper It talks about the fact that the e-narrow shortly after it was launched You can't find the app on the Google Play Store and that calls for a lot of concern at the point where the issue of weather Nigerians were accepted and How soon they can adapt to it and the workability, but do you see this app, you know surviving you you know, you know, we live in a very Interesting country and interesting times It's such a shame that the central bank of Nigeria will create an app and Within days that app will be removed He didn't disappear. It was removed from the play store It's such an indictment on the system Because we think we can do anything anyhow. It doesn't work that way countries Organizations corporate bodies have ways that they operate And you have to follow the assistance and procedures and I expected that my government in wanting to get an app in the play store whoever is their IT consultant would have understood all the dynamics all the expectations of That's you know set up the play store and they would have complied So that whatever needed to be done whether it is integrated tests whether it is You know agreeing with their rules running by the assistance and laws all those things would have been done Whether it is payment everything and then when it gets up there I mean like my church would have an app in the play store and it's running and it's I mean for years It's going on no problem. And yet my country will have an app in the play store and Within days it is removed Now, do you know what central bank has done? They came with you know, these guys are very very very Disingenuous they came up with a with a distracting view of all there is a fake up or a fake This that is going on instead of them addressing the issue of telling us why that app has been removed from the play store They're telling us there's a fake effect Twitter handle. There's a fake. This is for goodness sake What's my business there? Mine is that I can't get this this app and I'm able to use and by the time people lose That momentum and that interest and people start to wonder and have doubt and bring Speculations into what's happening. It could be an honest mistake. Come out. Tell us. Okay. Yeah There are losses. We should not do this and that which we did and as a result They have taken us out with complete and we're complied and we're going right back Or there was this to be done that we don't we have done it So we're right back so you restore confidence and you lose that speculation of people saying because I'm gonna come and say oh boy be like say this is no walk or no start to if you put your money as they remove There from place turn us what do you think would just stop one day and all your money go go and people once people do that They'll just avoid it like a plague and that's not good for us So let the system come up and tell us why it was removed from the play store and what they have done about it And restore confidence that is cerebral governance. That's the way things are done You know with all of these apps and how it functions Usually when you have an app in a store Google play store your iOS usually you have reviews about product and all of that so People actually went there to drop bad reviews about the app and that's why it was taken off It happens with every other app. It happens with every other product I mean if you have bad reviews and bad comments about it, it will be taken out So it brings us back to the question of will because first of all This is the issue of at the time where you have the government saying oh, you can't not trade with this blockchain Technology was bad and all of that and then we come up with our own So it feels like the people who have a trust issue and do not believe in it I feel that the government has a lot of work and responsibility in that direction But let's move away from that conversation now and also talk about the Annabra election Which is slated still state because the federal government is still insisting that the elections would go on and iPop is also still insisting that The sit-at-home order should also go on asking people to sit at home from the 5th of November through the 10th of November now the question also on this other hand you have the Harnaces stakeholders in this particular region asking for peace Do you see a point of compromise? Do you think that there would be some meeting points where? Some persons would begin to shift grounds, and then we might just have a good time I think that one has to know where to draw a line between grandstanding and Facing issues I pop unfortunately has been given a space to operate and They have taken a hold of that space Not in the way that I would wish it were but in a way that they have decided to do and The federal government Unfortunately again is not proactive And a lot of people do not see beyond their nose The Bible talks about the sons of Isaka that could discern the signs of the times There in ight city. There are people there are that project the future Your phone that you have that phone was done about 10 years ago And they kept testing and testing the technology that we will use in 10 years time in 20 years time Is being developed today that we use it that technology today does not mean that that technology came up today It came up. It was came up about 10 years ago some 15 years ago some 20 years ago Why am I saying this? They ought to be people in government who are strategic thinkers and for Forecasters They can see tomorrow before tomorrow comes they ought to have seen today But let me take a little space and tell you that the prognosis Of what is going to happen in Anambra state if we allow it to happen If we allow iPop to make Anambra election to fail The the significance the pop-up is going to be much more than Election did not hold in our number Anambra is going to embolden other Militia's other ethnic groups Who can now take us to hold us to ransom? And you may discover that it could go into the next election in a kitty or something like that And if we don't control it early enough since we don't have this capacity We don't seem to be thinking ahead It could go into a general elections and it could throw this country into the chaos that we can never imagine a Curse of gargantuan proportion So I think that the first thing that people should do is to swallow their pride This iPop we call them or he has said they have nothing to lose absolutely nothing to lose I like the style that is being adopted by or Haneze sometimes used to to conquer Yesterday in one of the stations a man like and you bar if I you buy if I you buy I think he falls if I you but he said his sought permission to go and have a one-on-one dialogue with Nandikano And I think he was denied. This is a time for SSS or DSS To pick one two three people and let them have a full night meeting with Nandikano Let them listen to him. That is the first line The second line is some federal government people should join in that meeting The third line is that some of Nandikano's people should join that meeting within three days There should be intensive meetings where nobody knows is not a media event Nothing is reported anywhere and the aim should be let's need this in the boat Let this thing be called off. Let's have an election Some people's pride is going to be wounded But that's a price you are going to pay for nationhood when you have a madman run away with your You have you have bath in the stream and a madman collects your dress and runs away with it For you to run to one teaching me lesson is for you to just make yourself worse than a madman Wisdom demands that you sit down.  Can you when you covered yourself properly and find a way of getting Then you can go after the madman when all said and done But right now we want to grandstand. We want to teach him We don't care how we thinking of our future. Are we thinking of this country? Are we thinking of the larger implications of what is going on? Let the federal government let the DSS this night Carry private jets pick one two three strategic people have a meeting with Namdi Kano all night By the next day Let them bring one two three of Namdi Kano's people to join in that meeting by the third day Let them bring one two three of federal government people who are going to give them this this Assurances within three days. Let us have this meetings maximum three days And the next thing you know is that namdi can because nobody knows about it If namdi Kano say something from that place and his people don't real code it outside It's not gonna work. So the DSS should have known about a ESN They should have known about I pop. They should have known about namdi Kano They should have known about the strategic people that are needed in this operation. Let me call it that it need be brings it in states men Go to namdi Kano. You know, there must be something he respects a mother. Somebody respects everybody has a weakness somewhere.  I will blow no one no good. Please. I beg Let them do this All right This is the much that we can take is a delight to hear you share your thoughts every other time With us right here. We do appreciate your time. We say Zika. Yeah, I took thank you so much for being part of the Conversation this morning. We will step on the brakes now when we return the conversation We'll bring you up to speed with what's happened. What happened today in history. Please stick around


The former president of Nigeria, Dr. Goodluck Ibele Jonathan, says, for the unity of the country to be achieved, politics of ethnicity should be set aside. Speaking of the topic, it will quest for Nigeria's unity. Former president Jonathan says, the time has come for Nigeria to focus on the things that will bind everybody together as a nation. He made a remark in a weary during the ATF, a birthday celebration of Angel and Manuel and Wanyahu, whom he described as a man of many colors and a meticulous investor. For God the Hope, Uzo de Ma, Wanyahu is worthy to be celebrated, adding that love should be seen among Nigerians irrespective of race or tribe. This is a statement by our different leaders. And look at this position and this statement in me. And I wish to believe that as of that time, that reflects the people in the nation's vision for the unity of Nigeria. Then of course, that people stood for the unity of Nigeria. People have seen the friendship that is conducted. Then we as a country should know that we need to review certain things and certain things will be done differently. But we should not be slaves to our talents. Let us get over the obstacles and move forward. We have to adapt. We must not conform. We cannot conform to some apparent behavior considered to be politically incorrect. People like me, the Jews that had independence, these were not given independence of the way to walk. They were not given independence because of their technological fears of the Mahatma Project. They used Mahatma Project to negotiate with other parts of the world. And United Nations, led by America, granted independence to Israel. It is not about having a country. How human is a country. One percent of something is better than 100 percent of nothing. A very normal experience that's supposed to celebrate that. It is a manly way, a nice way. That we never did. And we know that. We can still make a country out of the opportunity because of Nigeria. To reciprocate the Igbo attitude of love and unity.  This is very good. That GPY owns better. We lost our opportunity for this, we think. And give best to a more united and progressive Nigeria. I thank you very much. I think that we have done more for Nigeria. And in fact, even the world, they said, has been doing more. Because the manly people were stopped by the majority. And then the world, for them, will really get it. It's the beginning of the transition from world to future. That we are building this country and the people there in the world will really get it. And I thank you very much. Thank you very much. A new Igbo man in Nigeria. Thank you very much.


Fy greu i am ymwyaf i'r ysgol yw'r Fyglwys. Mae ydych chi'n gweld ffaith o'r ffordd oherwydd a'r byd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd o'r ffordd oherwydd. Fy datblygu i'r orycle, ond y gweithredu yw'r ymddangos i ddefnyddio'r dweud. I'm going to talk about FN project, which is an open source project that Oracle sponsor that I contribute to, and try not to let my boss know how much time I spend on it. So, serverless. Is anybody here using serverless at the moment? What are you using? No, but which platform? Okay. Yeah, serverless. The CNCF definition of serverless, and I've put some of the words in bold, is it refers to the concept of building and running applications that do not require server management. So, it's not like a traditional application. We're not going to kick it off and then worry about how it runs after that. And it also describes a finer grain deployment model where applications are bundled together as one of more functions, and then they're uploaded to a platform, and then they're executed and they're scaled and built in response to the exact demand needed at the moment. So, not only do we not want to know about them when they're running, but we actually just want them to die when they've finished. This is actually my favourite working definition.  So, it's really about abstraction. You've still got servers, you've still got network, you've still got all of the infrastructure and the operations associated with it, and what you want is the capability that that delivers, but you don't want to have to look after it yourself. And that enables us to focus in on delivering the functionality that the business want. And we're going to deliver that functionality using functions or functions as a service. So, if we're in the faz world, what we're doing is writing small functions. If they get big, then you should reappraise whether you need more functions or whether you should be doing that. They should do one thing, preferably well, and they should be easy to understand so that should make them easy to write, easy to get right and easy to fix. And then we're going to run them on top of our serverless platform, which is abstracted infrastructure. And one of the upsides of the developer is it avoids this kind of situation. The business has asked you to go and build something and you know there's a whole load of setup work that needs to be done beforehand, like installing a database or an LWAP server or whatever. And then the boss comes along and thinks you've just been sitting around wasting time for three days because he can't see anything on a screen to play with. Another advantage is in terms of resource utilization. Because our functions are only going to run for a short period of time and then go away, we should be able to get better utilization of our infrastructure. We're not going to have stuff running when it's idle. And about a year ago, University of Berkeley did a report on serverless and they said, customers benefit from increased programming productivity and in many scenarios we see cost savings as well. So this is lovely. Sorry. There are no silver bullets. There are only double-edged swords. And for the record, I am not telling you to go and write everything from now on as serverless and go and rewrite everything you have as serverless. I didn't say that. So amongst the downsides, it's shiny. It's a new thing. People go, hmm, I would like to play with this new thing. And this leads to what I would call CV++ programming. I want this for my next job, so let me go and write this other thing that doesn't need serverless in a serverless way. The other problem that we tend to come across is one of locking. You can't just take a serverless function that's written for one serverless platform and go and run it on another one. You're kind of tied to the serverless platform. And then, and this is a big one for me personally, you might find that the platform is tied to a specific cloud vendor. Which means that if you decide you don't want to be with that cloud vendor anymore, or you might find that you're writing for customers who want to be on different clouds, you've got a bit of a problem. So it can be a cage. It's a very nice cage, but I would make sure that you know you've got enough room in there before you get in behind yourself and close the door. And I've been involved with serverless now for two, two and a half years. And in that time I've come across people who've been concerned about all of these different freedoms. So portability, that ability to move between clouds and on-premises. Decentralisation, people who say specifically I want to run across multiple clouds in case one has a problem. Packaging, they might choose to say I want to package my cloud functions in the same way that I package my microservices. Local testing, the ability to actually test your stuff locally and see what's going on. And one that led me in, which was language, because my favourite language is Ruby. And two and a half years ago, if you went to write serverless functions and you wanted to write them in Ruby, there was very little out there that would let you do it. So I started looking around for something and I came across the FN project, which was one of the few that treated Ruby as a first-class citizen. So you can get FN project at fnproject.io and that will give you a link across to GitHub and a whole bunch of guides. It's a serverless platform. It is container-based. It's open source Apache 2.0. It's part of the CNCF landscape and has a representation with CNCF. And what we do is we model functions as containers. So you take the function and its dependency and you create a self-contained docker image. And then when it's invoked, you're going to get that container stood up and it will run and then it will go away. That's ephemeral. It's also a good reason to make your function stateless because if you write something inside the container on your next invocation, you shouldn't expect to find it there. And the good news is it will run on any cloud as long as that cloud will let you run docker. It will run on-premises or you can run it on your laptop. In fact, anywhere that you have installed docker. So, if you go to the site and you look at the guides, you'll get an install guide and there will be a curl script. You can run if you're on Linux.  It'll tell you don't use that for production because you're supposed to use a helm chart. Because production, it should be on Kubernetes. If you run version, you should get back as client version, a server version. If you're on Windows, I know some people who run this on Windows subsystem for Linux. I've not tried that myself. You can run it on Windows on a virtual box VM. Mac world is even easier. You just go brew install fn. And again, you come down, you do fn version. You should get the two and do the start. Right. So now we've got it installed. We want to create our first function. So you do fn init minus minus runtime. If you're me, you go Ruby, and then you give it a function name. And it creates a function in the directory with the name that you gave it. And so you get a boilerplate function. And because it's cloud native, there's a YAML file created for you as well. Because it can't be cloud native unless there's some YAML. So we have a look at our function. We've got require fdk, which is function development kit. And then we have a boilerplate hello world function will be generated for you. So deaf my function context is like metadata around the call. And the input is actually the input you've been given. And then that's passed to the handle method of the fdk. You point it at the function and it will go and run. And it will just carry some data about the file, in particularly the entry point. We say when the container comes up, it's going to run Ruby, FunkRB. So what we've created is our function code inside a function container, usually sitting on top of the fdk. And the fdks, they just basically make it a lot easier for you to write functions. You include the gem or the library or the package, whatever your language calls that kind of thing. Write the function to the function interface and the fdk provides input data to the function and writes the output in the errors and we have these fdks available at the box. Right. Come on quickly. Damn thing. Right, Ruby fdk. What happens if you make helpful suggestions on an open source project? There. And then the person who started it left, so I kind of am the Ruby fdk maintainer. So what happens, all the fdks work pretty much the same way. The container comes up, the fdk opens a socket, the fn service connects to the socket and then we get past the input. It's passed as HTTP over the sockets, which we call HTTP stream. We execute the function, giving it the input and the context right back on HTTP stream. Errors are written to standard error, which then goes to syslog. You're not playing, are you? If you don't have an fdk, it's not actually a problem because it's docker based. If you run fn in it in a directory with a docker file in it, it will assume you want to build a function out of that docker file. So you can either bring your own docker file or you can template, so bring your own image. And we also have a facility called hotwrap, which is if you've got a command line program and you want to just turn that into a function without doing too much work, you include the hotwrap binary in the docker file and make that the entry point and tell it to go and run that and it will take the input, feed it into standard input of the command line program and take the output back on standard out and then ship it back out again. So now we've created our function, we need to deploy it. So we create an application and then we do the deploy, telling it which app it's going to go to. And then what you'll see is it will do a multi-stage build and push it to your docker registry. It could be yours, in this case it's docker hub. And then your function's created. You might decide that you don't actually want to push it to a registry. So if you're sitting on a train or something like that, you don't really want to be pushing to docker hub, in which case you say deploy minus, minus local, it does the build of the container but doesn't actually push it anywhere else. And then you want to invoke it. So from the command line, fn invoke fozdem hello, hello world. Now obviously you're not going to be invoking it from the command line most of the time so you can do an inspect of your function and you get that beautifully memorable URL or come out. Which is the one that it's using internally. You also see things like there's an idle time out on the function which I'll talk more about in a sec. And you can do a curl to that URL but it's easier if you can create a more meaningful URL. So we have a thing called create trigger. The only type is HTTP at the moment. And you can give it hello URL and then you'll wind up with a more meaningful trigger endpoint which you can hit and get the same result back. You can also have that created for you automatically when you do the init. So you say minus trigger C. I'm not biased. I'm including node in this minus trigger and it will tell it to create there. Or you can even just include it in the funk.yaml file for the function and it will create it for you on deploy. So we've got our function container. We've got our function code. We've got our fdk. That is running in Docker. So the fn server itself runs Docker internally and then within that we run the function containers. A couple of reasons for that. In the early days it made things a lot more stable because if something blew up it would contain the problem. These days the main reason for that is that it gives us much more control or much less sensitivity to the external Docker version because we control the internal Docker version. The actual architecture, full architecture for deployment we'd have Kubernetes. On my laptop I just only ever run Docker. Docker fn server function. We've got a container registry, a metadata store which holds things like the endpoints and assist log service for errors. I'm going to need to go quicker. When an invocation comes in, the request comes in, the fn server will go and look at the metadata store and say what function maps to that URL. Have I already got an instance of that function running? If I haven't, well if I have I just give the work to it, if I haven't then I stand it up if necessary pulling from the container registry, send the output back to the user, anything that's gone wrong gets written to the assist log service. So if you raise an exception then that is going to wind up in the assist log. That's a joke, don't worry. There is actually a book. This is actually a book, Prisoner in a Toothpaste Factory, assuming that you're not a prisoner in a toothpaste factory but you do want to get messages to the outside world. You can just write to standard error and hope that the police are reading the log and will come and rate to skew you because you're being held prisoner in a toothpaste factory. I said about the idle time-out. Well you were useless anyway. I said about the idle time-out. The functions run at least once and then it waits for that idle time-out before terminating just so if we get a lot of invocations on the same function you're not having to pay for the start-up cost every single time. You can configure that up or down. Your FDK needs to handle multiple invocations or if you're not using one and writing your own you need to remember that. It's another good reason to make your function stateless because you don't want dirt hanging around from a previous use. Orchestration. The functions are quite small so they're not going to do a great deal individually so we need a way to orchestrate them. In FN we have something called flow. It's promises-based orchestration. Unfortunately for those who like XML and YAML and things like that it's not a new dialect of that. It's Java or Python and you use that to compose your functions together. It can be synchronous, asynchronous, asynchronous in series in parallel and it's written in your code as a function and you deploy it within the app as a function. Only your good sense stops you putting business logic into the function. Remember the flow is supposed to be a conductor not an instrumentalist. If you start getting it to do both at once things will go wrong. I think I've got just time possibly for some Shakespeare. There is always time for Shakespeare. So FN enjoy. Well let's hope so. So what I have is this on-bit bucket. I've taken Shakespeare's comedy as you like it. I've come up with all the different functions that are required for the play to be performed. We've got the right result. That was it. That was it. Result. That was it. So if you look at a flow so what we see in here is there's the this is the action of the play. Various characters are added and then we invoke different things. They get disguised. At the end of the day they should all preferably have a happy ending and get married and yes we've had four weddings and no funerals. So with apologies to Shakespeare. Yes so serverless it's abstracted infrastructure on top of which we run ephemeral functions for higher productivity and lower costs but you should beware of locking and you have an option. You don't have to just go with AWS or Azure or Google and be locked into the cloud as well as the platform. FN project is an open source serverless platform. It's container based. It functions in any language. You can run it in any cloud or on premises or on your laptop. Questions I guess I've got a minute or two. Otherwise grab me afterwards. I'm really easy to convince to talk with beer or tweet me at you and Slater. We are we were looking at CRDs I would have to go and check because actually most of the time I said I don't run it on Kubernetes. I just run it on Docker any more for any more. The question was how do you connect such a function to the database and what there's a couple of ways I've seen this done one I approve of and one I don't and you shut up. It is. So I have seen people do things like wrapper JDBC driver and credentials into a function container and then use that and I just look at that and think that's horrible. I don't think the credentials should be in there and you're opening a JDBC connection that was designed to be a long lived thing. Me I would go for a a rest API of the database if it has one. If not then I would have some either be sticking stuff into an event service or a queue which was then going to be read and polled by the database or just actually probably if it's me something with a little bit of Ruby and Sinatra that stood in front of the database and you send something to it and then it sorts out writing to the tables and things appropriately. OK. Thanks a lot.


The best way to spread Christmas cheer is singing loud for all three years! You're not like us, buddy. You're not an L. No! Are you new, buddy? I'm going to New York to see my family. I think it's Christmas tree I've ever seen. It's the Empire State Building! I'm Joby, here are you. I'm Buddy. Miss Cheers! Cheers!


In this presentation we will calculate the federal income tax FIT using tax tables. This is going to be our example set of data. We're looking at the payroll register focusing in mainly on Bill Smith. Bill Smith who is an employee worked 40 hours at 17 rate for a regular pay of 680, 3 hours overtime, overtime rate 2550 for overtime pay 7650, total earnings then 75650. We're focusing here on the calculation of FIT federal income tax. Remember that's not our federal income tax as the employers but the employee's federal income tax which is reported on the employee's 1040 at the end of the year however is something that we need to calculate throughout the year take out of their paycheck as the employer in accordance to comply with the law. So that's what we're doing here. We're going to remove federal income tax in an attempt to match how much is going to be taken out so that when they do the 1040 at the end of the year it will have already been removed and so that's what we're going to do. First we need to know what the FIT wages are which could differ than total wages. So total wages is here was that 75650. It's going to be reduced by those things that are on the 1040 for example typically reduced for gross pay or adjusted gross income things like retirement plans and the cafeteria plan. So we're going to take those out of FIT so that we can then calculate FIT using the tables. Also note that the federal income tax when we say federal income tax it's not the employer's taxes that we pay on our tax return meaning that a corporation pays federal income tax a partnership pays it on a flow through so does the sole proprietor however those are on net income and we're paying the federal income tax for the employees that the employees in essence owe and we'll ultimately report on their 1040. So to get the federal income tax wages we're going to start with the 75650 and then we'll subtract from it the cafeteria plan. So we first need to know that so we got to get the cafeteria plan on the retirement plan. So these these numbers we gave these numbers here and so that's going to be the 756.5 minus 250 minus the 35 would give us the 47150. So we're looking for 47150 is going to be our actual FIT wages and then we're not focused so much on the second employee but if PAM had 280 and 185 same type of thing we're going to say 365 3.85 minus 280 minus the 185 gives us 3188 85 3188 85. So these are the numbers we're then going to use to look up our tables now that we have these numbers we can go to our tables and look this up now there's the totals here so if we go to our tables they look like this and we're focusing in here on this this first FIT wages and looking this number up in the table it's important to note that we get the right table we have to if we go through the circular E to find this and you can go on to the irs.gov website and find it the current circular E whatever the current time period is and then go to the brackets and find the correct tables there's going to be a ton of tables because they're going to have to have a different table for pay periods so we'll need to know when the pay period is ours we're going to say is weekly in this case could be bi-weekly could be semi-monthly could be monthly just make sure not to mix up semi-monthly and bi-weekly they're different so you want to pick up the right the right table there and then we need to know if the person is single or married so again there's going to be two separate tables for each pay period based on single or married and note all this complexity is basically because of the complexity of calculating the tax it's a it's a progressive tax system so we have to somehow figure out how what the tax brackets do and one way to do that is with the tables clearly it's a lot easier to have software that will automatically look up this information for us but it's still important to kind of look this up and try to figure out why the tables are this way so that we can understand it and if we do any tax planning it's important for us to have some concept of what's going on here so we're going to look for this 141 within these two sets and then find the number of exemptions here which for bill is one so we're going to say that it's going to be between the 470 and the 480 it's right in between here and that's going to be the exemptions one will get us to this 300 or this $35 so on this one paycheck we're going to withhold $35 also note that if it was on the 470 like if notice 470s here twice so you might say well should we pick the 34 the 35 typically we'll pick the higher number and that's kind of like a conservative type estimate we want to estimate on withholding too much than too little we would rather have our employee get a bigger withholding or bigger return on their 1040 at the end of the year than paying because that's probably more likely to cause problems so typically we'll withhold more than less you might ask well this is kind of complicated what if I picked up the wrong number which is possible like if we're doing this by hand if we picked up the wrong number it would kind of watch itself out at the end the FIT it kind of works itself out in a way because when we do the 1040 we'll have the we'll have the total withholdings that will match up to what the actual tax calculation was based on our 1040 and if we withheld too much then we'll get a more of a refund if we have withheld it too little then we'll owe money and so that's going to we want it to be right on target because we want to give our employees as much money as they can in their paycheck or if we are the employee we're trying to calculate our payroll to get as much as we can in our paycheck and not owe any money at the end of the year getting a refund is not the objective the objective is to not pay penalties and interest at the end of the year and if we end up owing a lot of money we could then end up paying interest and penalties otherwise we would it would be better for us to actually not pay until the end of the year because then we get to hold on to our money longer and invest it and and possibly make money on it so that's why that's why we have to do the withholdings the IRS wants their money sooner and therefore we have to do these withholdings and get the money to them as the time passes so this is going to be the 35 then and so we're going to put that into our information here so we have the FIT and we're going to withhold the $35 from the FIT on our table


Hello and let's talk about the farmers protest that has been going on for the past few days. As almost any child in India knows by now, farmers from various states, especially Punjab and Haryana have been protesting at the Delhi border. Their demands are nothing new. They have been asking these demands for many, many months now, primarily the withdrawal of the three farm bills that were very controversially passed by the Modi government. Across the country, solidarity protests have been taking place, not only farmers but students, activists, artists, everyone has been joining in this cause.  On the other hand, the right-wing social media sections of the establishment have been intent. They have been bent on discrediting these protests. First of all, the argument that was being put were these were anti-national elements, as usual. Then, of course, there was the argument that these are richer farmers and do not represent the bulk of the Indian peasantry. And now after all these have failed, the argument, the narrative is now shifting to how the government is actually willing to concede demands, but the farmers are kind of being a bit stubborn about it. Now this is being circulated in various media organizations online, of course. So we decided to go into the question, this question, precisely in terms of what exactly are the farmers' demands? What are the demands that the government is willing to concede? And what right now is the bone of contention? We talked to senior journalists Anindya Chakravarty on these issues. Thank you Anindya for joining us. So the protests have been going on for quite a few days now, the multiple narratives happening over the past few days in the media, of course, in social media. And now we see that after two rounds of discussion, there's a bit of uncertainty about what's really happening. There's definitely one clear narrative that is going around from some sections which say that the government is willing to make concessions, you know, it looks like a reasonable debate that's going on. So could you talk about, to begin with, we'll go to some of the media issues later, but to begin with, could you talk about the areas on which these concessions are currently being made? I think that what we will go back to that media issue because I think these are connected in a certain way because ultimately it is true that the majority of farmers out there are from Punjab because that is which is the most affected state when it comes to MSP. Most other states do not get MSP, we know that. Even farmers, leaders, unions admit that. But MSP does act as a floor price almost everywhere. So even if they don't get MSP, MSP affects them. So it is true. So given that for a long time, I think that the Modi government thought that this is going to not affect the overall public move, right? Now the problem there for them is that, yeah, and I guess the calculation is, look, Punjab in any case, we don't make much of a headway. Congress has been winning even at the peak of Modi wave. So why care, right? So that is one of the things that this government probably calculated. But I think what has happened is that what they did not anticipate is the huge public space with Punjabis occupied. And how much public culture is influenced by Punjabis and how much, what kind of a connection these people have with farmers. So you've seen that people, NRI seeks from across India have come out and said that this is bad and they should be paid. They have nothing to do with it. They must have might have left this country many years ago, may have sold their farms, but that connection still exists. We know that Bollywood stars have entered this space and in support of the Punjab farmers because they believe that this is a matter that they have to take up to retain their popularity. If they're silent, so we see popular pop singers like Nika, right? He's speaking about the Punjab farmers, right? So we saw yesterday an actor called Diljit Dosanj, I think if I'm not got it wrong, he got into the fray. And we've seen that once that happens, then it is not that easy to control the public space anymore. So now comes part two. How do you now divert the attention without giving up on the key thing? Because what is this reform so-called reform about? This reform essentially is to enable big capital to get into farming, right? Not into farming, but into farm produce retailing. Because we know that many of these people have actually entered into these large retail things, we know Ambani's got into it, others have got into it. They want to sell vegetables and fruits and stuff to us, people like us. And they want to control that. Now, the government is operating on their behalf. We've discussed this in the past, Prashant, how this government is essentially representing monopoly capital. No government ever has in my opinion. So here's the point, how do you now appear to be the reasonable party? And that is now the move that the government is making. So it's planting stories, it's giving out feelers that we are actually willing to give up on all these reforms and okay, you guys don't like it here. Take it back, it's okay. So they are essentially trying to give up on three key things. Now, farmers have four, I would say four key issues that these farmers have. And if you look at it, I'm going to go in reverse order. At least I'll take the three which are not really that important, but still important. The first one, of course, is the level playing field between APMCs, which are the Mondi's that where the Arthya, the traders said, which are the registered regulated Mondi's. And as we know that the APMC bypass law as it has come to no round, allows private traders to come into the space and buy directly from farmers. Now you would say in APMCs, there are two kinds of levies and taxes that are taken and they're not taking from farmers. The big thing that has been spread by the BJP and its supporters out there is that apparently farmers pay for this. This is an absolute untruth, it is paid by grain traders. So the first is the levy for running that Monday. You can say, okay, grain traders ultimately take it from farmers, but that's okay. Every corporate tax a corporate pay ultimately is paid by us. So are you saying corporates don't pay taxes? Right, so that's the point. So in Punjab, for instance, there's a 3% levy charge for running the Monday. The government charges, the state government gets and it runs the Monday. Which provides farmers spaces where they can go and keep their grain, right? The Monday allows them to do it and it provides people the space to bring their grain, get it sold, weighed and stuff like that, which is the cost, which traders pay. The second part of it is the levy, the surcharge again on traders, which is the 3% surcharge for rural development. We know that in Punjab, many Mondays have been added or rural roads been added based on this levy being taken by the Punjab government. Punjab government has in the past been bankrupt. So this is one important source of money. So farmers have said that we want a level playing field. If APMCs are being charged this money, then you need to ask the private traders, private Mondays also to pay this, right? Now there are two reasons for this. Number one reason which directly affects farmers is that they get a storage facility. As one farmer I was watching on news click, in fact, was saying that even a farmer who has let's say six acres, five acres of land, which works out of two hectares of land, which is technically a small farmer under the government's own calculations, even that person, the produce they come up with, they crop, they cannot store it. They have to take it to one of these Mondays to store it and they have to hand it over to someone who will store it, right? So they're saying that if you are left with a situation where you cannot store because once there's no level playing field, what will happen? That the private Mondays will take over because they don't have to pay these levies, right? When it can't, don't have to do that. Then what happens? You might have to pay for storage number one. Secondly, that entire space goes away. So you'll have to, you'll be forced to sell because you can't store. So farmers have that. Secondly, when it comes to these traders, yes, as I think P Sainath has said, that government schools aren't good. They're pretty bad, right? We know there, but they're better than no schools. So APMC Mondays are not good. The entire trader middleman Arthya system is not good. It is exploitative, we know that.  And that is something that farmers know because Arthyas and traders have a social relationship with farmers. They're there in the village for ages. They're registered, right? And because of that, when a farmer doesn't have money, they go to the local trader. Trader advances them some money. Usually charges a huge rate of interest. But what stops the government from providing, you know, the banking services, right? Banking services to farmers. Why aren't they there? All this talk about Jandhan account, we know it's essentially rubbish. The accounts exist, but there's no outlet for farmers to take loans. So farmers actually take loans to repay loans that they've taken from local Arthyas. But at the same time, it is also true that when a farmer is in distress, it's not the government, it's not the bank which comes to help the farmer. It is the Arthya who comes to help the farmer, right? So there's a social connection. It's an exploitative connection which inaccurately could be called a feudal connection, but it exists. There is a relationship out there, which is why the farmers want those people to still be there. They don't want it to be thrown open to an outsider who could exploit them an unknown entity. So that is number one. Now, we hear from these planted stories and what one hears from the government that the government is willing to rethink this and maybe even private mundis will be told to pay the surcharge because private mundis will spend their own money to run the mundi so they don't have to pay the levy, the cost, but surcharge they should pay, okay, fine, level playing fee. So the government appears to be very reasonable, right? Here was the thing they said, we wanted to encourage private mundis, but okay, if farmers want it, who are we? Here, take it. Number two is again connected to the fact that Arthiyas are part of that system, is registration. All Arthiyas, all APMC traders mostly, right? Which are called the Pakkarthiyas. There are Kacharthiyas who are not registered, but again, they are also part of the system itself. They are registered if they do not pay up, their registration can go. But what happens if, what is the government saying?  Here is an advance, rest you'll get once it sold, right? And then I disappear, right? Where is the farmer going to look for me? It's not possible for them to do that. So this is why they want registered people to be there in their system. They want registration. Now again, the government essentially says, okay, we wanted to do that. This so that farmers can access, I mean, so that it's easier because we are against bureaucracy and red tape. So that we, and if farmers want more KYC, okay, we'll do that, right? Again, very reasonable, sounds extremely reasonable. The third part which comes is dispute resolution. So if there's a dispute, the law and the new laws say that you cannot go to a civil court, right? You'll have to go to the district magistrate and the district magistrate, whatever they say is fine. And we know the district magistrates are part of the administration, right? They will do what, there's a much lesser degree of independence that a district magistrate has if they have any compared to judiciary. Even a lower court is more autonomous, more independent than a district magistrate would be or the executive would be. And therefore, again, the government is saying that, okay, we will reconsider that if the district magistrates dispute resolution mechanism fails and the farmer is not happy, then they can, we might consider allowing them to go to civil court. So three of those demands which appear to be key demands are being given up, right? Because farmers don't really mind contract farming if they can make more money. They're worried about contract being signed and then payment not being made so that they can be dispute resolution if possible. Of course, that dispute resolution when a large corporate comes with a battery of lawyers with the top law firm in the country, what a farmer can do against that? I have no clue, but nevertheless, right? Now comes to number four. This is where we'll see that newspapers have reported that government ready to accept three out of four key demands. Now, it is like saying that I need, I like to eat my food on a dining table with a chair and preferably if my food is hot and warm, I would like to have that. And I would like to have a glass of water or maybe a cola drink along with my food if possible. Now you tell me that, okay, I agree to give you the chair, the cola, and the heat that you wanted, but food, I'm sorry I can't give you. So essentially that's what it is. The key demand of MSP, which is minimum support price, that is what the government doesn't want to give. And I think this is where the media's role comes into the picture. Absolutely, right. So in this context, just to make matters clear as well, the MSP has been the central demand all the, and this is not the first strike we've seen actually. We have some multiple protests by workers, by farmers over the past three, four years. The Swaminathan Commission has become, in all of these protests, it has become a central keyword that has been very much in the demand. But what we do see is still a very concerted campaign to pretend that this is not really something that is as important. So there's a very clear ideological projected play for what are better words. So here's the thing that there is actually the, in a sense, there was a trap out there. So if you see that a lot of farming activists and people who are sympathetic to farmer causes, they've been saying that only 6% of farmers get MSP because under the government's own Shanta Kumar Commission admitted that and in its reports, only 6% get it now. Now, it's not a very, the second part of what the report said was and therefore farmers shouldn't be given MSP. So you basically say that only 6% of people actually get paid the full minimum wages. So why keep minimum wages? It's effectively saying that. So, or 50% of men in India beat their wives. So why make beating wives illegal? It's effectively broadly, that is the argument that this government is giving. Farmers don't get MSP. So why give MSP, right? And there is an entire paraphernalia of manufacturing of concept that is going on around it, that MSP is bad, it creates, it raises prices of food and stuff like that. Really, is that why food prices have not risen consistently in this country and a wholesale basis? Is that why farmer income for the last 25 years, real income has been flat in this country? So essentially, these are all lies. The point is MSP, it is true. As I think Harish Damodaran showed in one of the articles that by calculating that it is not 6%, it is much more. And also a lot of farmers, there are other products because what the Shanta Kumar committed did was it only looked at paddy and wheat farmers. What it did not look at is those like pottern and then there are some, there are other, I think 14 odd crops in which MSP is given. It did not look at that. And therefore, and also the fact that there are milk corporators where there is dairy is protected in a lot of ways through this process. Not necessarily MSP, but there is a floor price. And therefore farmers do get it. And if you don't give it, then there's a big change. So the question that everyone has been asking and all farmers have been saying that we love your privatization. Frankly, they don't really mind privatization. They don't mind private players coming in and doing things as long as they get MSP. They're saying here you believe that private players will ensure that we get more money. So what is the problem in giving us MSP? Say that if you cannot give more than what I'm getting today, which is MSP, right? Then you can't buy it. Very simple, right? Why doesn't the government put me that a law? Why doesn't the government say that if a farmer comes to a Monday and gives it, they are by law have to buy what is being given to them at MSP, right? The only reason the government wasn't want to do it because the government knows that private players will pay less than MSP does, right? So that is the entire logic. It is simply that you cannot afford to put that in law because no private player wants to pay for the government pays. That's as simple as that. So for farmers, everything else is secondary. If one had to take one single issue that is essential in this entire agitation, that is the minimum support price and a fair minimum support price. And we know that all this agitation, all this while has been about minimum support price. Exactly. This government came into power saying that we will increase MSP and we will ensure that MSP is given according to the Swaminathan Committee report, which said that not just calculating what the costs are right now, not just calculating what family labor amounts to an imputed cost, but you also have to give everything that you give corporates as cost. You allow corporates to take cost, rent, imputed rent, cost of the machine which they own, right? Depreciation. Why don't you give that to farmers? So that is what is called the C2 cost. And the government actually, government's own CACP actually, Commission for Cost and Prices, Agriculture Cost and Prices publishes that, right? Every year for every state and every crop. So what's the big problem in saying this is the minimum amount that you'll have to pay if you buy or, and if you can't pay it, don't buy it, right? So that's the basic issue here and that is what the government wants to pretend by putting everything at the same level. We're saying MSP is one issue. These are the three issues. We're accepting three and these farmers are so unreasonable, they're stuck on one. Great. Actually in some senses from what you were saying it also appears like this struggle of course is about agriculture, it's about farmers but it's also about one of those fundamental questions that India's development path is faced which is that when the government is not able to provide what it should do and then decides that the best solution is just to let in private players to do what they want. How do you actually oppose or why do you oppose it? So in some senses this is an answer to the narrative of nearly 30 or 40 years as well which says that services are bad, so let's just prioritize. Yeah, exactly. So that's the entire, and we've seen what has happened because of that. We've seen what has happened in medicine. Yes, we have these great hospitals which look like hotels and you can go in and you'll get cable TV in your room if you have the money but we know what has happened to access to medicine. We know how much people have got indebted because of medical costs in there before. So these are things that are obviously the government has withdrawn and allowed because we have a class which has emerged which has wanted the government to withdraw. The government was there not out of some great love for the people but because the India's capitalist class wanted the government to be there when it was there except there were these, let's say these conjunctures when Indira Gandhi shifted left because of her own internal politics within the Congress too. And though that's a small short period in the history of India when that happened and we pretend as if it was always like that. It was probably 69 to 70, 75 odd, the six year when it happened at 75 onwards we've seen a move away from that very quickly. Thank you so much Arunthi for talking to us. Thanks a lot. That's all we have time for today. We'll be back on Monday with more news from the country and the world. Until then, keep watching NewsClick.