India has a hole where its middle class should be
印度中产阶级缺失
That should worry both government and companies
应引起政府和商界的关注
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Print edition | Leaders
磁铁的英文
Jan 13th 2018
2018年1月13日星期六
AFTER China, where next? Over the past two decades, the world’s most populous country has become the market qua non of just about every global company eking growth. As its economy slows, business are looking for the next t of consumers to keep the tills ringing.
在中国之后，哪个国家会是下一个呢？在过去的二十年里，这个世界上人口最多的国家已经成为几乎每个寻求增长的跨国公司的市场。随着中国经济放缓，企业正在寻找下一批消费者，以保持其经营状况。
To many, India feels like the heir apparent. Its population will soon overtake its Asian rival’s. It occasionally grows at the kind of pace that propelled China to the status of economic superpower. And its middle class is thought by many to be in the early stages of the journey to prosperity that created hundreds of millions of Chine consumers. Exu你比我猜游戏
berant management consultants speak of a 300m-400m horde of potential frapuccino-sippers, Fiesta-drivers and globe-trotters. Rare is the chief executive who, upon visiting India, does not proclaim it as central to his or her plans. Some of that may be a diplomatic do of flattery; much of it, from firms such as IKEA, SoftBank, Amazon and Starbucks, is sincerely meant.
对许多人来说，印度感觉就像是下一个“中国”。其人口很快就会超过同在亚洲的中国。有时，它的经济增速会驱动中国进入超级经济大国的步伐。而它的中产阶级则被许多人认为处于创造了亿万中国消费者繁荣之路的初期。充满活力的管理顾问谈到了一个三到四亿的潜在星巴克饮料、菲斯气泡酒、漫游家行李箱的潜在消费者群体。罕见的是，首席行政长官在访问印度时并没有宣布这是他计划的核心。其中一些可能是奉承的外交手段;但其中大部分诸如自宜家，软银，亚马逊和星巴克等公司是真的这样想的。
Hold your elephants. The Indian middle class conjured up by the marketers and consultants scarcely exists. Firms peddling anything much beyond soap, matches and phone-credit are targeting a minuscule slice of the population. The top 1% of Indian adult
s, a rich enclave of 8m inhabitants making at least $20,000 a year, equates to roughly Hong Kong in terms of population and average income. The next 9% is akin to central Europe, in the middle of the global wealth pack. The next 40% of India’s population neatly mirrors its combined South Asian poor neighbours, Bangladesh and Pakistan. The remaining half-billion or so are on a par with the most destitute bits of Africa. To be sure, global companies take the markets of central Europe riously. Plenty of fortunes have been made there. But they are no China.
双料骗子别惊讶。在营销人员和顾问的概念里，印度中产阶级几乎不存在。除了做肥皂，火柴和电话信贷生意之外的任何公司都在面向极小一部分人制定目标。印度成年人中收入前1％的人口，也就是最富有的那一档占800万人口的居民，年收入至少有2万美元。这差不多相当于香港的人口和平均收入。接下来9％的人口类似于中欧，就是全球范围内的中等收入水平。再接着40%的人口，完全是印度与其南亚邻国，贫穷的孟加拉和巴基斯坦，相结合的真实写照。最后剩下的五亿左右与非洲最贫穷的地方相当。可以肯定的是，跨国公司严重掠夺中欧市场。那里已经创造了很多的财富。但他们不是中国。
Centre parting常见的英文
中分头一样的状况
Wor, the chances of India developing a middle class to match the Middle Kingdom’s are being throttled by growing inequality. The top 1% of earners pocketed nearly a third of acll the extra income generated by economic growth between 1980 and 2014, according to new rearch from economists including Thomas Piketty. The well-off are ten times richer now than in 1980; tho at the median have not even doubled their income. India has done a good job at getting tho earning below $2 a day (at purchasing-power parity) to $3, but it has not matched other countries’ records in getting tho on $3 a day to earning $5, tho at $5 a day to $10, and so on. Middle earners in countries at India’s stage of development usually take more of the gains from growth. Eight in ten Indians cite inequality as a big problem, on a par with corruption.
马蹄怎么煮更糟糕的是，印度发展出像中国那样的中产阶级的环境正在因发展不均衡日益加剧的问题而受到约束。根据包括托马斯·皮凯蒂（Thomas Piketty）在内的经济学家的最新研究，在1980年至2014年期间，收入最高的1％的人口提供了近三分之一的由经济增长带来的额外
收入。现在的富人比1980年要富裕十倍；中位数收入甚至没有翻倍。印度把每天收入低于2美元（按购买力折算）的人口的收入提升到3美元。这已经做得很好，但是与其他国家相比，仍然不足。有些国家已经把每天收入低于3美元的人口的收入提升到5美元，还有从5美元提升到10美元的，等等。处于印度发展阶段的国家的中产阶层通常会从增长中获得更多收益。八成印度人认为，不平等是一个大问题，与腐败无异。
The reasons for this failure are not mysterious. Decades of statist intervention meant that when a measure of liberalisation came in the early 1990s, only a few were able to benefit. The workforce is woefully unproductive—no surpri given the abysmal state of India’s education system, which churns out millions of adults equipped only for menial work. Its graduates go on to toil in small or micro-enterpris, operating informally; the “employ” 93% of all Indians. The great swell of middle-class jobs that China created as it became the workshop to the world is not to be found in India, becau turning small business into productive large ones is made nigh-on impossible by bureaucracy. The fact that barely a quarter of women work—a share that has en a precipitous decline in the past decade—only makes matters wor.
照相技巧失败的原因并不难解释。数十年的中央集权干预意味着如果自由化措施在90年代初出现，只有少数人能够受益。印度的教育体系很糟糕，所以劳动者的生产力极其低下一点都不意外。成千上万的成年人只能从事低技术性的工作。从这样的教育体系里走出来，毕业生们继续在“雇用”了93％印度人且非法经营的小型或微型企业工作。中国在成为世界工厂时创造了一大批中产阶级就业岗位，但这种情况并没有在印度出现，因为官僚作风下是几乎不可能把小企业变成有生产力的大企业的。事实上，印度只有四分之一的女性有工作。在过去的十年里，这个比例还在急剧下降。这只会使问题变得更严峻。
Good policy can do an enormous amount to improve prospects. However, hope should be tempered by realism. India is blesd with a deeply entrenched democratic system, but that is no shield against poor decisions. The sudden and brutal “demonetisation” of the economy in 2016 was meant to target fat cats, but ended up hurting everybody. And the path to prosperity walked by China, where manufacturing produced the jobs that pushed up incomes, is narrowing as automation limits opportunities for factory work.
良好的政策可以极大地改善前景。但是，希望应该由现实主义来调节。印度拥有一个根深
蒂固的民主制度，但它还是可能产生不良的决策。 2016年突发的残酷的经济“恶化”的目标是有钱有势的人，但还是以伤害了每个人的结果告终。中国利用制造业创造了增加收入的岗位，从而走向繁荣之路。这种方法正在因为自动化生产减少了工厂的工作机会而变得越来越困难。
