 For more videos on people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Hello and welcome to Around the World in 8 minutes, a show by People's Dispatch. In this show, we bring you the struggles of the toiling masses against oppression and exploitation as well as their fight for a better world. In this episode, we first look at the demonstrations in India against the regional comprehensive economic partnership. Next, we go to New York City where massive protests took place against police violence and high sub-woofers. Our last story is from Kenya where informal workers have won a huge victory for the first time they will be protected under the country's labour laws. The regional comprehensive economic partnership is a free trade agreement between 16 countries, the 10 Asian countries along with India, China, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand and Australia. This is the largest free trade agreement India has ever negotiated and it poses a huge threat to the country's domestic production. Let's take a look at the demonstration that took place in New Delhi on November 4th and why farmers, workers and other sectors of the country are opposing this trade deal. The basic tenet of this agreement is the country will be able to send their products, agricultural products, industrial products and service to sale in other countries who are under this agreement without any custom duty, without any tariff. Free, free entry and that free entry will, Indian 130 crore people's market will be open to those 16 countries to sell their products here. Problem is, you know, Indian products, cost of production in India is more than the cost of production in other parts of the country because all other countries give highly subsidy for their products. But our farmers and our people get less subsidy. A range of sectors have already been impacted because of cheap imports and low growth. So you've seen opposition from the steel sector, from automobiles, from diary, from textiles, from toys, from bicycles. And the challenge is that you already have an open economy. But our sector is asking India to go beyond that. I'm coming from Kerala. In 2011, before signing the Indo-ASEAN agreement, one kg of rubber farmers were getting 247 rupees. After the agreement, the excess import duty on rubber has been slashed and ultimately resultant in the deep decline, steep decline in the rubber prices and presently the rubber prices is almost around 100 rupees. So it has declined from 247 rupees to 100 rupees. The other big area in the RCEP is the clauses on intellectual property rights. And as everyone knows, India is the production house of cheap generic medicines. And a lot of these medicines also go to Southeast Asian economies. So patients groups that access these affordable generic drugs have been campaigning against the intellectual property chapter, which actually is not, like I said, applicable only to India. So the Thai patients groups, the HIV patients groups in Thailand have also been arguing against the RCEP, citing Indian generic medicines going out of production if the IPR chapter comes into place. If you look at in last 10 days of the festival season, Indian small traders have lost a lot. I mean, we are calling about black Kali Diwali in most of the traders who are selling small shopkeepers and all who sell mobile phones and all those things. But on the other hand, the big e-commerce companies like Amazon and Flipkart and Walmart have made a profit or made a sale of around 7 billion rupees in just during this festival season. And in RCEP, we are going to open up e-commerce and we still don't know who would control the data. Of course, the major protests have happened in India. But if you look at countries like Philippines, Fish Focus, trade unions have also been fighting against the RCEP. And as we speak, there are picking protests happening outside the trade ministry in Manila. Thai groups are trying to protest, like I said, the HIV groups. For Philippines, one of the concerns that groups have raised is how the chapter on services will lead to further privatization of sectors such as health and education. So it's not just in India but across the region. Moving on to our second story, hundreds of residents of New York City in the United States came out in protest over the weekend against police violence and high fares in the city's iconic subway system. The protests weren't in response to several incidents of police violence on Friday, November 1 in which police were seen confronting passengers suspected of fare evasion. In the most recent incident, a group of armed policemen charged at a subway train in a bid to catch a man suspected of fare evasion and possessing a gun. In the video that has since gone viral on social media, the man who calmly responded to the police commands was forcefully pinned down by multiple officers while bystanders inside the subway coach were seen distressed as they were fareing gunfire. This was only the latest in several instances of disproportionate reactions from the police, especially targeting people of color for fare evasion. Protesters also highlighted the exorbitant fares charged by the subway system, which cost an average New Yorker 2.75 to 3 US dollars for a single trip and is currently the highest in the United States. The Metropolitan Transit Authority or MTA, which operates the city's public transport network, has been running into losses recently because of the plummeting investment by the city's administration. The MTA has sought to remedy this by hiking the fares, adding further pressure on the city's poorer residents. Dozens of people were jumping turnstiles at subway stations, refusing to pay for the service in protest. Much of the anger of the protesters was directed against the increase in police deployment inside the subway stations along with the expansion of surveillance of the subway network. Anti-NYPD banners and placards were prominent at the protests, including one that Red punched that cop, NYPD, out of MTA. Last month, the MTA hired over 500 additional transit police personnel to deal with fare evasion by subway passengers. In the meanwhile, cameras were installed at every turnstile in certain stations. This coupled with the fact that the police violence seems to be disproportionately directed against people of colour has strengthened demands for police reform. Finally, in Kenya, an agreement signed last week between five informal workers associations and three trade unions representing the formal workers of the food, health, education and metal sector marked a milestone in the history of the country's working class. For the first time, informal workers including street vendors, cleaners, mechanics and others have been brought under the protection of the country's labour laws. With the percentage of workforce employed in the formal sector steadily declining, the informal sector in Kenya has increased to include over 84% of the workforce. In fact, the trade union movement, which so far represented only the formal sector workers, has fallen short in providing representation to a large chunk of the country's working class. The three unions signed a memorandum of understanding with multiple associations of informal workers of different sectors at a public ceremony bringing 5600 informal workers under the organised unions. With a total of 4.9 million people labouring in the informal sector in the country, there is a long way ahead for a considerable section of the informal workforce can be organised. However, this is the start of a process which is bound to give a massive boost to the strength and mandate of trade unions across Kenya. And this is all we have in this episode of Around the World in 8 Minutes. For more such stories and videos, visit our website peoplesdispatch.org, subscribe to our YouTube channel and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Thank you for watching.