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Nov 13th 2009
From The World in 2010 print edition
By Simon Cox, DELHI
Thanks partly to the monsoon, manufacturing will overtake agriculture for the first time in India
一定程度上得归功于季风气候，印度的制造业总值将首次超越农业。
From the village of Vijay Pura in the Indian state of Rajasthan, the global financial crisis seems remote. The downturn is something people here read about in the newspapers, according to Dhanna Singh, a member of the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS), a union of activists and farmers. The villages have welcomed back migrant workers from neighbouring states, where people no longer find work twisting steel in Mumbai or polishing diamonds in Surat. But, by and large, India’s rural poor were protected from the crisis by the same things that make them poor. If you never had secure employment or many financial assets, you cannot lose them to the crisis.
对于印度拉贾斯坦邦维杰.普拉村来说，全球性金融危机似乎很遥远。根据德哈那.辛格，一名积极分子与农场主联合会MKSS成员的说法，经济低迷只是这里的人们从报纸上读到的谈资而已。很多移民工人从邻国返回到这里，因为他们在那儿找不到工作，既不能在孟买扭钢筋，也不能在苏拉特磨钻石。总的来说，印度贫困地区的人民因其贫困而免受经济危机的影响，因为，既然没有可靠就业和大量的财务资产，也就不会在经济危机中丧失。
In Rajasthan, this resilience is also the result of government policy. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), extended to every rural district in April 2008, is supposed to offer 100 days of work a year, at the minimum wage, to every rural household that needs it. Rajasthan, a parched state with a long history of drought-relief works, comes closer to fulfilling that promise than anywhere else, providing 68 days of work on average in the year to March 2008, according to a survey published in Frontline, an Indian newsweekly. Vijay Pura is cross-hatched with hard-packed roads built by people on the act’s payroll. Thanks to the roll-out of the NREGA and a hike in the minimum wage, “People here are feeling a sense of security for the first time,” says Shankar Singh of the MKSS.
在拉贾斯坦邦，这次经济反弹也是政府政策的产物。2008年四月全国农村地区就业保证法案扩展到了每一个农村地区，在最低工资下有望在一年里提供100天的工作时间给每一个需要的家庭。发表在印度的一家新闻周刊《前线》的调查显示，从今年到2008年三月，拉贾斯坦邦这个有着悠久抗旱历史的的“旱邦”将提供平均68天的工作时间，相对其他地方离兑现承诺更近了。维杰.普拉位于几条硬化路的交叉点上，这些路是就业保证法案覆盖到的雇员修建的。幸亏有该法案的出台及最低工资水平的提高，“这里的人们第一次有了一种安全感，”MKSS的成员香卡.辛格说。
The strength of rural demand is one reason why India escaped from the crisis so lightly. Sales of many “fast-moving” consumer goods, such as shampoo and toothpaste, are now growing faster in the villages than in the cities. Rural India’s purchases of chyawanprash, an ayurvedic paste that eases digestion and bolsters the immune system, outpaced urban India’s by over six percentage points in the second quarter. And Maruti Suzuki, India’s biggest carmaker, more than doubled its sales in rural areas in the year to March 2009.
农村地区的需求力量是印度得以如此轻易地从金融危机中脱身的原因之一。许多诸如洗发水、牙膏之类的快速消费品需求如今在农村比城市要增长得更快些。第二季度，一些有助于消化、增强免疫系统的阿叔吠陀膏药chyawanprash的农村消费比城镇超出六个百分点，且截至2009年3月，印度最大的汽车制造商马鲁蒂铃木在农村地区的汽车销量翻了一番还多.
India’s economy is now on the cusp of an historic transition.
印度经济正经历历史性转型
But, having weathered the financial crisis, rural India must now weather the weather. The monsoon rains, which feed India’s unirrigated farmland, have been fickle, inflicting drought on almost half of India’s districts, followed by floods in some areas as the monsoon departed. In a worst-case scenario, India’s agricultural output could shrink by up to 7% in the fiscal year ending in March 2010, according to Citigroup. That would drag India’s GDP growth down to 5.2%, slower than in the thick of the financial crisis.
但是度过了这次金融危机后，印度农村还要扛得过气候问题。哺育印度干旱农田的季风雨反复无常，使一半以上的印度地区遭受旱灾的折磨，接着便是季风过后在一些地区发生的涝灾。花旗集团的数据显示，到2010年3月的财政年度，印度的农业产出在最糟糕的情况下将会以7%的速度萎缩，这将使印度的GDP增长减少到5.2%，比金融危机风起云涌时还要低。
The drought will raise food prices, adding to inflation. India is already the only big economy where consumer prices are rising faster now than they were before the crisis. The price of pulses rose by 20% in the year to August 28th; the price of sugar by 35% . That will force the Reserve Bank of India to tighten monetary policy. Goldman Sachs expects it to raise rates by as much as three percentage points in 2010. Spending on drought relief will also add to the government’s yawning fiscal deficit, which will exceed 10% of GDP this fiscal year, if the budget gaps of the state governments are included.
干旱将抬高食品价格，助长通货膨胀。当前印度现在已经是唯一一个消费者价格比危机前上升更快的大经济体了，截至今年8月28日，价格已以5%的幅度上升，其中糖价上升35%，这将迫使印度储备银行收紧货币政策。高盛预期印度的价格指数将在2010年上升3个百分点。对旱灾的赈济开支将加剧政府本已高企的财政赤字，如果加上各邦政府的预算缺口在内，2010年的财政赤字将超过GDP的10%。
The monsoon once decided India’s economic fate. Now it only influences it. Agriculture’s share of India’s national output has dropped from 40% 30 years ago to 17% in 2009. Indeed, India’s economy is now on the cusp of an historic transition. In 2010 agriculture will account for a smaller share of GDP than manufacturing: India’s output of widgets will exceed its output of wheat, rice, cotton and the other fruits of the land. The factory will surpass the farm.
季风曾经决定印度经济的命运，现在则只能起影响作用。农业在印度全国产出的比重已从三十年前的40%跌到2009年的17%.不错，印度经济正处在历史性转型的关头，GDP中农业产值将比制造业占有更小的比重：印度小机械产品产值将超过小麦，水稻，棉花和其他一些农作物。工厂将超越农场。
Return to the glory days
回到峥嵘岁月
That is not just because agriculture is poised to shrink. Manufacturing, which stagnated during the crisis, should recover smartly in 2010. It was already growing by over 7% in July 2009, according to the index of industrial production. Investment in new plant and machinery will get a boost from the return of foreign capital inflows, some $44.1 billion in the year to March 2010 and $52.1 billion the following year, according to Rohini Malkani of Citigroup. About 35-40% of those flows will be foreign direct investment.
这不仅仅是因为农业准备要收缩，在金融危机中停滞的制造业将在2010年悄然复苏，工业生产指数显示其在2009年7月已经增长7%强。依照花旗集团的（首席经济学家）罗希尼?马尔卡尼的观点，在国际资本回流的帮助下，厂房和机器投资将在2010年3月及接下来的一年分别获得441亿、521亿美元的极大提振，其中约35%-40%将属于国外直接投资。
India’s historians often hark back to the glory days of manufacturing in the 18th century, when Indian artisans produced calicoes and other fabrics of such appeal that Britain’s spinners, weavers and printers clamoured (successfully) for import bans to protect their livelihoods.
印度的历史学家常常重提18世纪制造业的峥嵘岁月，那时印度的能工巧匠们生产白羊布及其他一些类似的纤维织物，这引起英国的纺纱工人、织布工和印染工嚷嚷着（成功地）颁布进口禁令以保护他们的生计。
During Britain’s industrial revolution, however, Indian weavers were “thrown back on the soil”. India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, wrote that India’s industrial destiny had been thwarted by imperial economics. In 2010, thanks to a failure of the monsoon and a recovery of the world economy, India’s agriculture will at last give way to its manufacturing prowess.
然而，英国工业革命期间,印度的纺织工“被摔在了地上”，印度第一任总理贾瓦哈拉尔.尼赫鲁写道：印度工业的命运已经被英帝国经济所击倒。多亏雨水不足的雨季和世界经济的复苏，印度2010年的农业最终将让位于制造技术。
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