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  3. For an ambitious economic superpower, there can be few more nasty events than electricity cuts as massive as those that struck n

For an ambitious economic superpower, there can be few more nasty events than electricity cuts as massive as those that struck n

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问题     For an ambitious economic superpower, there can be few more nasty events than electricity cuts as massive as those that struck northern and eastern India this week. An area in which more than 600m people live faced blackouts over two days. The impact on India’s economy goes far beyond lost output. The blackout will badly damage the country’s reputation, and highlights the rotten infrastructure.
    The cause of the blackouts is gloomy—an overloading of the national network that links together regional grids is the most likely explanation. By most accounts engineers did a heroic job of patching things up. But the power industry, which must double its output roughly every decade if India is to grow fast, has long been a disaster waiting to happen. A pile of private capital has been attracted to build new power stations. But the rest of the supply chain is a mess.
    At one end, not enough cheap coal is being dug up and gasfields are spouting. At the other, the national transmission grid needs investment. Meanwhile the " last mile" distribution companies, largely state-owned, that buy power and deliver it to homes and firms, are financial monsters. Much of their power is pinched or given away free. Local politicians put pressure on them to keep tariffs low, which leads to huge losses. Squeezed between a shortage of fuel and end-customers who are nearly broke, those private generating firms are now cutting back on vital long-term investment in new plants.
    The solution is to cut graft, tackle vested interests and allow markets to work better. The coal monopoly needs to be broken up and local distribution firms privatized. Yet despite the looming crisis, for a decade the government has shirked doing what is clearly necessary, just as it has failed to implement key tax reforms, cut public borrowing or open the retail sector to competition. It has allowed corruption and red tape to damage other vital industries, such as telecoms.
    Politicians shirk these tasks because they fear offending powerful lobbies, such as the farmers who receive subsidised electricity, while voters seem to manifest little appetite for reform. No party has a clear majority in parliament, and none was elected on a platform of change. The present Congress-led coalition government has few people with a record of or an instinct for reform, save perhaps the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, who has now run out of vigor. It relies on unreliable regional parties to stay in power.
    India’s great blackout is a consequence of rotten governance. Voters need to understand that, and deliver the country’s political class a different kind of electric shock.
The author suggests that the root cause of the power cuts lies in______.
选项 A、the obsolete installations
B、insufficient private investment
C、unreasonable industrial structure
D、expensive raw material
答案C
解析 推断题。本题较为复杂，需要考生在全面分析文章结构和内容的基础上，对细节性信息进行高度概括。纵观全文，第二段和第三段全面分析了这次停电的原因。第二段第一句就指出了直接原因是印度国家电网超出了负荷，但随后点出电网建设方面存在的问题“the rest of the supply chain is a mess”。第三段分析了更深层次的原因，原料供应不合理、传送网络投资不足固然是原因，但更重要的原因是连接词meanwhile之后的内容：私营发电企业原料贵，电力售价低，供应链受到地方政府的钳制，产供销链条不顺。概括而言，就是电力产业结构不合理，因此[C]为答案。基础设施过时虽然在上文提及，但在第二段和第三段并没有进行进一步的阐述，因此[A]不是根本原因，应排除。投资的问题虽然在第二段最后一句和第三段第二句也提到了，但综合两段的内容，也不是根本原因，故排除[B]。同样，原料昂贵虽然也是具体原因之一，但也不足以概括全面的原因，故[D]也不正确。
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