 Hello and let's talk about the RCEP or the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership. The biggest free trade agreement in the world, the RCEP was signed into effect on Sunday and it will have quite an impact on the region. 15 countries signed it, the 10 countries of the ASEAN or the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and China, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea. The deal has been discussed for nearly 8 years now. Trade unions and people's movements have actually raised a number of issues about it in the past as well. This includes the impact the deal would have on labour rights, trade unions, agriculture production, marketing, etc. The negotiations were held in deep secrecy and until certain documents were leaked a few years ago, no one had any idea of what was happening. In India, there was a lot of domestic pressure by farmers' movements, trade unions and merchants' organizations which finally led to the country withdrawing from the agreement last year before it was signed. However, India's quandary on this continues as its role in trade cannot be dealing from the largest geopolitical issues in the region. On this issue, we bring you a conversation between Benny Kurwila on focus on the Global South, Prof. Bishwajidhar, a trade expert from the Jahlal Nehru University and news clicks Praveer Purkayashta. Dr. Dhar, your thoughts about what this means for India to be left out of two big trading blocks, both the RCEP and the CBP, the RCEP Declaration also allows India to rejoin immediately if so it wishes. The rhetoric that you see in the papers is that India is going to be isolated from the next round of globalization so you're concluding thoughts on what it means for India's trade strategy going forward. I think India has now decided to adopt a set of policies which are completely inconsistent with any further engagements in these agreements. I don't see how the Atmanirbhar Abiyan and the liberalization that RCEP or any other of these bilateral agreements are talking about, they can sit together. And as far as India's future is concerned, I think either way we would have had significant trouble because from what we have seen from the implementation of the three FTAs with the East Asian countries that we have, Asia, Japan and Korea, India has lost our big time. Now, and with the commitments under RCEP and the commitments under RCEP had to be very deep so like 90% plus elimination of tariffs which would have opened up agriculture sector as well and that would have been very difficult for India to accept. So I think that if the business as usual continues for India, which is that we are not focusing on really turning around our real sectors, agriculture and industry. We are not trying to make these sectors sort of efficient and dynamic. We are not building this into the processes. I do not think India can participate in any of these agreements with any degree of hope that it is going to be benefiting from these agreements. So I am someone who actually sits between the two extremities because there is one people who say, we should have joined RCEP and there will other set of people who always say that we should not actually liberalize. I have always been maintaining that we should be looking at the global processes but after strengthening our own or putting our own house in order and strengthening our own industries. But that has not happened. When this will be happening, we don't know. And in such time it happens. I think political compulsions will keep India out of all these trade arrangements. I just add to what he is saying by bringing out that if we believe that isolation is going to help us, it won't because unfortunately in today's world technology and goods are required for even developing your own sectors in the way you want. So having barriers, making it more expensive is one issue. It's not going to, in the 50s, 60s you could do that because the amount of complexity in technology is relatively less. So was the specialization in technology relatively less, not so today. So therefore being out of global trade, not being out but having a larger cost to go with global trade which may happen without strengthening the way we should be talking is one element. The other element of it is that you are allowing free flow of capital. On that there seems to be no bar. And therefore you are really combining two very dissimilar things. We are also making us open to digital monopolies of all kinds. We have allowed Facebook and Google to invest huge amounts in Geo, which is today the telecom monopoly. So we are seeing what Vishu did just said, disjointed policies and no vision. And I think that is the bigger problem rather than should we or should we not join our set? Thank you Praveer and Professor Dar for sharing your insights. The RCEP has just been signed. It will take some time for the ratification process maybe up to two years. But given the twin challenges of the pandemic, economic recovery, how India plays out its own strategies and you underline the importance of domestic, industrial and digitization strategies for that. It remains to be seen how all of this will pan out. Yeah, next story we bring you a segment of a conversation on the spike in COVID-19 cases in Europe. Most of Europe is going through a massive and more deadly spike in COVID-19 than the last time. In fact, if you look at the number of cases yesterday, six of the top 10 countries in that list are from Europe and this includes Germany, Italy, France and the UK. Italy, France and the UK all recorded over 500 deaths too. The governments of Europe did have an opportunity after the first wave of COVID-19 to put in place some measures to prepare. However, they failed to do that. In this interview, Alexis Benos, the People's Health Movement activist from Greece, explains how and why the governments failed to take the necessary action. So now we are coming today and this is very sad, I think, that instead of pushing some more, let's call them socialist policies towards health and health service and so on, in all Europe the governments didn't care about that. They didn't do anything about the public health services and actually they used the pandemic crisis as an opportunity to expand the private sector in all countries also. For example, which is an aberrant issue in the UK, they have outsourced the surveillance system. It's outsourced in private companies, in different private companies, which every company has its own system of recording. So this is for epidemiology and public health is a nonsense because you cannot have a homogenized system of data that you can see what is happening and evaluate and inference or that we have to do that or that or the other. So this is one thing. Here in Greece, the government said that they are going to use intensive care unit beds because Greece is the lowest in the European Union in rates with beds per population. So they said, okay, don't worry, we are going to use the beds of the private sector and said, okay, that's a step. But after that they said, okay, we are going to pay the private sector and actually they doubled the rate of hospitalization. Just within the crisis they doubled and they said, okay, but we have to pay them more. So this is the all approach. So we are today in the middle of the second wave, which is, as you know, it is even greater than what we were thinking of. I mean, we are expecting a second wave, but this is much bigger in quantity and in the strength of incoming society. And we are literally unprepared for that in all countries of Europe. I say again, nothing has been done. So today we are again in the same situation. And as you know, for example, here in Greece, we are now one week in lockdown, Austria today was get to know the lockdown is coming back as the only, the only solution because we don't have a do anything. Here we are going to another issue regarding health. I mean, because it's not only to care for the people who are ill from the COVID or whatever other listen, but also to see the factors that are determining health, which is the social determination of health. And this pandemic, as we know already, is a big danger for the massive health of the population because it is driving masses of the population in impoverishment. In famine, actually, in Europe, we are speaking about Europe in famine. So and all this actually now these days we are discussing in Greece and other countries that they are going to be, how do you say that, expulsed by their houses because they cannot pay the rent or the borrow that they have done. So all the factors or the determinants of health, which are food, house and so on and so on, are hit by the pandemic. So we are expecting much more problems of health because of the pandemic. So instead of doing that, what they are doing, I say again in all countries of Europe, is that they are turning, they are trying to keep in-house into the public health system, the problem of COVID patients. So they are destroying all the services for the other morbidities. So this is another issue that we have already, and this has been counted globally, we have an excess death rate of non-COVID diagnosis because there is no way to deal with heart problems or cancer problems or whatever, diabetes and so on. So we have a lot of morbidity that cannot be expressed, cannot be dealt with because there are no services. They are closing all services and are putting them under the COVID issue. Now, all this, I repeat, it's a result of the neoliberal policies. In our view, I mean, not only the people's health movement, but also I'm speaking as a public health specialist and epidemiologist and so on, the issue which is global, it's not only European, the very important issue is that we have lost globally the ability, what I said before, the ability first of all to record data, what is happening, who is ill, who is becoming ill, where, what are his characteristics or her characteristics, socially, work-wise and so on and so on, in order to be able to control the epidemic. And this is global, I repeat, I just want to stress, it's not European, but it is very important that one metropolis, let's say, of our public health is the CDC, the Centers of Diseases Control in the United States, which is also dismantled and they cannot deliver. We don't know, so today what is happening, and this is very important also, is that the governments are making lockdowns, closing schools or not closing schools or whatever decisions without any documentation, without any evidence. Actually here, and I think it is, I heard that I'm hearing that it is in Europe, in a lot of European countries, the government try to victim blaming the people, so they are saying, they are raising the issue of, that all this issue is an issue of personal responsibility. So it's you, the citizen that is the fault of the citizen because you go out, because you are not putting your mask or whatever. And especially in Greece, they are using that against the youth. I mean, because the youth are going out and they are in the platzas with a beer, something like that. So they say, okay, look what is happening, these are the people that are. So they are using that against the population. They are promoting the idea of personal responsibility. You can watch both these interviews on NewsClick. That's all we have time for today. We'll be back tomorrow with more news from the country and the world. Until then, keep watching NewsClick.