Botched Opportunities botch:v. 拙笨地修补,糟蹋n. 拙笨的修补,难看的补缀
Now those expenditures, plus an additional $25 billion on upcoming fertilizer subsidies, is adding $100 billion a year—or 10% of India's gross domestic product, or equivalent to the country's entire collection of income taxes—to the national bill. This at a time when India needs urgently to spend $500 billion on new infrastructure and more on upgrading education and health-care facilities. The government's official debt, which dropped below 6% of gross domestic product last year, will now be closer to 10% this year. "Starting last year, the government missed key opportunities" to fix the economy, says Gokarn. In fact, he adds, "there has been no significant reform done at all in the past four years"—the time the Congress coalition has been in power.
expenditure: n. (时间、劳力、金钱等)支出,使用,消耗
infrastructure:n. 下部构造,下部组织,基础结构，基础设施
coalition: n. 结合,合并,联合
Even the most bullish on India are hard-pressed to recall any significant economic reforms made in the recent past. A plan to build 30 Special Economic Zones is virtually suspended because New Delhi has not sorted out how to acquire the necessary land, a major issue in both urban and rural India, without a major social and political upheaval. Agriculture, distorted by fertilizer subsidies and technologically laggard, is woefully unproductive. Simple and nonpolitical reforms, like strengthening the legal system and adding more judges to the courtrooms, have been ignored.
sorted: 分类的，分选的
courtroom:n. 法庭,审判室
A June 16 report by Goldman Sachs' (GS) Jim O'Neill and Tushar Poddar, Ten Things for India to Achieve Its 2050 Potential, is a grim reminder that India has fallen to the bottom of the four BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) in its growth scores, due largely to government inertia. The report states that India's rice yields are a third those of China and half of Vietnam's. While 60% of the country's labor force is employed in agriculture, farming contributes less than 1% to overall growth. The report urges India to improve governance, raise educational achievement, and control inflation. It also advises reining in profligate expenditures, liberalizing its financial markets, increasing agricultural productivity, and improving infrastructure, the environment, and energy use. "The will to implement all these needs leadership," points out Poddar.
reminder: n. 提醒的人,催函
"We have a government in New Delhi with the best brains, the dream team," he says, referring to Oxford-educated Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Harvard-educated Finance Minister P. Chidambaram. "If they don't deliver, then what?"
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