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Sentence improvement — Choose the precise noun for ‘‘lack’’: revise the economic sentence ‘‘we have no shortcoming to cheap labour in India’’ to the most idiomatic collocation.

Difficulty: Easy

Correct Answer: scarcity

Explanation:


Given data
Original (faulty): ‘‘Whatever to our other problems, we have no shortcoming to cheap labour in India.’’


Concept/Approach
The idiomatic collocation is ‘‘no scarcity of cheap labour’’ (i.e., there is plenty available). ‘‘Shortcoming’’ refers to a defect/weakness in character or quality, not to quantitative lack; ‘‘deficit’’ is used with budgets; ‘‘default’’ is unrelated.


Option analysis
default — Means failure to fulfill an obligation; wrong semantic field.deficit — Typically financial; not the right fit with ‘‘labour’’ availability.scarcity — Correct noun for quantitative insufficiency; used here in the negative: ‘‘no scarcity of …’’No improvement — Keeps non-idiomatic wording.shortfall — Also a quantity term but the fixed phrase is ‘‘no scarcity of’’.


Verification/Alternative
Polished sentence: ‘‘Whatever our other problems, we have no scarcity of cheap labour in India.’’


Common pitfalls
Confusing ‘‘shortcoming’’ (qualitative defect) with ‘‘scarcity’’ (quantitative lack).


Final Answer
scarcity

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