India’s economy

印度的经济

Time for a makeover

改头换面的时候到了

In its second term, will the ruling coalition be bolder about reform?

在第二个任期内，执政联盟会在改革方面更加大胆吗?

词汇

Coalition/联合；结合，合并

INDIA’S NEW finance minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, is an unusual figure in the country’s politics. She is the first woman to head the finance ministry since Indira Gandhi seized the post (while also serving as prime minister) 50 years ago, after nationalising many of India’s banks. She is an economist. But unlike most in her Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) she hails from the country’s south, having grown up in Tamil Nadu, one of the few big states to resist the BJP’s advances in the recent election. She claims a humbler background than her predecessor, Arun Jaitley. Her father worked for India’s railways and she spent a month selling home furnishings at Habitat, a shop in London.

印度新任财政部长Nirmala Sitharaman在印度政坛是一个不同寻常的人物。自英迪拉•甘地(Indira Gandhi) 50年前将印度许多银行收归国有以来，她是首位执掌财政部的女性。她是一位经济学家。但与她所在的印度人民党(BJP)的大多数成员不同，她来自印度南部，在泰米尔纳德邦长大。泰米尔纳德邦是少数几个在最近的选举中抵制人民党进步的大邦之一。她声称自己的背景比她的前任阿伦•杰特利(Arun Jaitley)更为卑微。她的父亲在印度铁路公司工作，她在伦敦的一家商店Habitat卖了一个月的家具。

词汇

Hail/致敬；招呼；向...欢呼；

 

Ms Sitharaman thus embodies the BJP’s broadening appeal to aspirational Indians outside its traditional heartlands. But will she help it fulfil those aspirations? On the day she was appointed, India’s statistical authority reported that growth in the first quarter of the year had slipped to 5.8%, its slowest since Narendra Modi was elected prime minister in 2014 (see chart). The government also belatedly released a report it had withheld showing that unemployment had risen to 6.1% in the year ending June 2018. In India, the jobless are often not the poorest, who cannot afford not to work, but the newly educated, qualified for better jobs that have yet to arrive.

因此，西塔拉曼女士体现了印度人民党在其传统核心地区之外对有抱负的印度人日益扩大的吸引力。但她会帮助实现这些愿望吗?在她被任命的当天，印度统计部门报告说，今年第一季度的经济增长已经下滑到5.8%，这是自2014年纳伦德拉·莫迪当选总理以来的最低增速(见图表)。政府还姗姗来迟地发布了一份未公布的报告，该报告显示，在截至2018年6月的一年里，失业率已升至6.1%。在印度，失业者往往不是最穷的人，他们没有钱不工作，而是受过良好教育的人，他们有资格获得尚未到来的更好的工作。

词汇

Belatedly/延迟地；延续地

Withheld/保留；扣留

The prospects for a quick economic recovery depend partly on the banks Ms Gandhi nationalised. They are responsible for most of the bad loans that have long clogged lenders’ balance-sheets. Optimists point out that the share of bad loans has begun to fall. And several troubled banks have been permitted to expand credit after a more lenient official was put in charge of their regulator, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the country’s central bank.

经济快速复苏的前景在一定程度上取决于甘地国有化的银行。长期以来，银行的资产负债表上充斥着大量不良贷款，而这些银行要为这些不良贷款负责。乐观主义者指出，不良贷款的比例已经开始下降。在印度央行——印度储备银行(RBI)，这所更宽大的机构人员被任命为监管机构负责人后，几家陷入困境的银行被允许扩大信贷。

词汇

Clog/阻塞；堵住

Lenient/宽大的；仁慈的

 

The RBI cut interest rates for the third time this year on June 6th. It must also keep a close eye on India’s lightly regulated “nonbank” lenders. They have kept credit flowing to households and industry in recent years, financing themselves by selling bonds and commercial paper to yield-hungry mutual funds, until one lender defaulted in September 2018.

6月6日，印度央行今年第三次降息。它还必须密切关注印度监管宽松的“非银行”放贷机构。近年来，它们一直保持信贷流向家庭和行业，通过向渴求收益的共同基金出售债券和商业票据为自己融资，直到2018年9月一家银行违约。

词汇

yield-hungry/追求收益的

 

The prospects for a cyclical recovery seem brighter than the chances of deeper reform. Ms Sitharaman is unlikely to enjoy the same autonomy given to Mr Jaitley, a cabinet heavyweight who helped pave Mr Modi’s path into national politics. His departure due to ill health may mean his boss takes a closer interest in economic affairs. That is not necessarily a good thing.

周期性复苏的前景似乎比深化改革的可能性更光明。西塔拉曼不太可能享有贾特利所享有的同样自治权。贾特利是内阁重量级人物，曾帮助莫迪进入国家政治。他由于健康原因离职，这可能意味着他的上司对经济事务更加关注。这未必是件好事。

词汇

Cabinet/内阁的；私下的

 

As chief minister of Gujarat, Mr Modi excelled at drumming up investment from big corporations and breathing down civil servants’ necks. But that approach has translated less well to the role of prime minister, which requires more indirect methods, such as creating the right incentives and delegating to the right people. A bureaucrat quoted in “The Lost Decade”, a new book by Puja Mehra, talks of long, tedious meetings, in which Mr Modi would monitor his policies’ implementation and the civil servant would scoff the peanuts and chickpeas.

作为古吉拉特邦的首席部长，莫迪擅长从大企业那里争取投资，并对公务员施加压力。但这种方法对总理的作用效果不太好，因为这需要更多间接的方法，比如建立正确的激励机制和授权给正确的人。Puja Mehra的新书《失落的十年》中引用了一位官员的话，他谈到了冗长乏味的会议，莫迪会监督政策的实施，而公务员们则会坚决执行。

词汇

Bureaucrat/官僚；官僚主义者

Scoff/嘲笑；嘲弄；狼吞虎咽

After Mr Modi’s first victory in 2014, liberals hoped the pro-business tub-thumper would become a pro-market prime minister, encouraging investment by liberalising labour and land laws, relying on statecraft, not stagecraft. Instead he became what Indians call “pro-poor”, providing a multitude of redistributive welfare schemes, such as cash handouts for small farmers.

2014年莫迪首次获胜后，自由派人士希望这位亲企业的演说家能成为一名亲市场的总理，通过放宽劳工和土地法来鼓励投资，依靠的是治国之道，而不是舞台技巧。相反，他成为了印度人所说的“亲穷人”，提供了大量的再分配福利计划，比如向小农发放现金。

词汇

tub-thumper/传教士；慷慨激昂的演讲者

liberalise/使自由化

statecraft/治国才能；管理国家的本领

stagecraft/编剧才能；演出技术

 

These schemes seemed inspired by the government’s lingering fear of being outflanked on the left. It largely abandoned its efforts to ease the acquisition of land for industrial purposes after Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the opposition Congress party, accused it of being a “suit-boot ki sarkar”—a government for suited-and-booted corporations. It was slow to help public-sector banks write off their bad loans, in part because it did not want to appear soft on crony capitalists.

这些计划的灵感似乎来自政府对被左翼包围的挥之不去的恐惧。在反对党国大党领袖拉胡尔•甘地指责印度政府为“suit-boot ki sarkar ”——“一个穿着正装的企业组成的政府”之后，印度政府基本上放弃了放宽工业用地收购的努力。它在帮助公共部门的银行注销不良贷款方面行动迟缓，部分原因是它不想在裙带资本家面前显得软弱无力。

词汇

Lingering/拖延的，迟迟不结束的

Outflank/回；挫败；翼侧包围；智胜

Crony/密友；好朋友

Since this timidity helped win it a second landslide, Mr Modi would seem to have little reason to abandon it. But perhaps his victory has finally killed his fear of the opposition. Ms Sitharaman was described as a “one-person demolition squad” after her impassioned response in parliament to Mr Gandhi’s accusations of government cronyism. Having bulldozed the opposition, perhaps Mr Modi will now feel emboldened not to copy it.

由于这种胆怯帮助它赢得了第二次压倒性胜利，莫迪似乎没有理由放弃它。但也许他的胜利最终消除了他对反对派的恐惧。西塔拉曼被形容为“一个人的拆迁队”，此前她在议会对甘地有关政府任人唯亲的指控做出了慷慨激昂的回应。在压制了反对派之后，莫迪现在或许会有勇气不再效仿。

词汇

demolition squad/拆迁队

impassion/激起…热情；使激动

cronyism/任人唯亲；任用亲信

bulldoze/强迫；恫吓；用推土机清除