The Shadowy Side of Booming India: The White Tiger

India has been variously described by different people at different times as exotic, spiritual, poor, dirty, shining et al. Writers in recent past have presented these images of the country so that we find Rajarao describing the exotic, Kamala Markandeya about social problems, Rushdie talking about the magic realism, Arundhati Roy about the various injustices (caste, class, gender etc.) prevailing, Kiran Desai about the political unrest. Of late the government and Bollywood films have been trying to project India as a fast developing country which is booming and progressing by leaps and bounds, displacing the earlier stereotypes. However, Aravind Adiga strips away this sheen and in the process exposes the shadowy side of this booming India in his novel The White Tiger. He bagged the Man Booker Prize 2008 for this debut novel of his and has no doubt been highly praised in the mainstream media as a result. The novel is meant to be a social commentary and a study of injustice and power in the form of class struggle in India that depicts the anti-hero Balram representing the downtrodden sections of the Indian society juxtaposed against the rich. The White Tiger protagonist exposes the rot in the three pillars of modern India - democracy, enterprise and justice - reducing them to the tired clichés of a faltering nation. It is set in the backdrop of the economic boom in India that has ushered in a great chasm between the haves and have-nots. The background against which events of the novel take place is not that of a resurgent economy but of one which is infested with rampant corruption, poverty and inequality. In the novel, he writes about the binary nature of Indian culture: the Light and the Darkness and how the caste system has been reduced to "Men with Big Bellies and Men with Small Bellies."

"In the old days there were one thousand castes and destinies in India. These days, there are just two castes: Men with Big Bellies, and Men with Small Bellies. And only two destinies: eat - or get eaten up." So claims Balram Halwai, the narrator - a self-taught entrepreneur. Balram's village ancestors were sweet-makers, his father a rickshaw-driver; he has been lucky to escape by learning to read and write. We are told his story in the epistolary form as a seven-part letter to the Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao "From the Desk of 'The White Tiger'/ A Thinking Man / And an entrepreneur / Living in the world's centre of technology and outsourcing/ Electronic City Phase 1 (just off Hosur Main Road/ Bangalore/ India,"(TWT 3) in which Balram confesses his guilt and his ambition - his emergence from the world of "Darkness" to the world of "Light" of the cities which is a world of servants and masters: from brutal poverty and deprivation to successful entrepreneurship.

Balram begins at the very bottom, without so much as a name; his family call him only "Munna", or "boy". His mother might have named him, but she died of TB early in his life. His father was too busy pulling a rickshaw, weakening himself to be claimed by the same disease. A schoolteacher has to name him instead; later, a local official decides on his date of birth in order to facilitate the stealing of his vote. We follow him, from his school days, as he has to drop out, to pay off loans, then migrate to the local town, and how he finally gets the Job. All along the way, he learns his lessons in ambition, and getting ahead in life. He begins in the rural "Darkness" of Bihar, a state with lowest economic and developmental indicators, a world of landlords and peasants. And when he escapes to the "Light" of the cities, in fact to the capital of the country and the adjoining Gurgaon - supposed to be the powers that be, it is into a world of servants and masters. When luck and a ruthless eye for the main chance land him a driving job in the "Light" of New Delhi with one of the landlords' families, the moral darkness only increases.

The story is really about a lot of things. It is about the new India; One that appears to be shining through Glass buildings, fast cars, easy money and malls lit as if with Christmas lights, while at the same time, it is hollow within, and the tension between this superficial prosperity, and the utter poverty and helplessness of those that actually make and build this India, and make sure it works like clockwork. It is about those areas of darkness, which lie within the minds of people that are the fuel of this machine. They are there in our cities, but not living in them. It is about Balram, the driver of a rich landowner, who has made quite a lot of wealth, of course, with several irregularities, and corruption. His son Ashok, a foreign returned educated young man, is in Delhi, paying off the Babus and the Netas, to make the Tax problems go away, as the family picks on a fight with the politician of that area. It is with this son that Balram serves.

Balram goes on to become an entrepreneur in Bangalore. He tells us along the way of how he wants to get ahead in life, but how he is caught in his instincts to be a good son, as well as a loyal servant. One thing at the heart of this novel, and in the heart of Balram as well, is the tension between loyalty to oneself and to one's family. He calls these instincts, 'the rooster coop'. He had dropped out of school, and become a 'half-baked Indian', but he never gave up on educating himself on the ways of life.

This is a story of how he learns about a new morality that would be required in his quest to the top. He had once been called a "white tiger" by a school inspector, who was surprised by his extra ordinary talents, in an inadequate village school. This tiger has to get out of his cage, learn the laws of the jungle, and rise to the top of the food chain, giving up on most of the things he once believed in.

Adiga's novel is rich in detail -- from the (often corrupt) workings of the police force to the political system, from the servant classes of Delhi to the businessmen of Bangalore. It is fiercely critical of a society where the only way to succeed is through the corruption that fuels the entire system. Families trade their sons for dowries, and expect every penny earned in the city to be sent back to the village. Businessmen flourish by providing constant bribes to politicians. Doctors are too busy treating rich patients, despite drawing salaries from the state to actually treat poor people. Policemen "solve" crimes based on who pays the highest price. Politicians buy votes, making a mockery of the democracy India is so famous for. No part of society is free from the lash of Balram's tongue as he reveals the decay. Even his fellow servants are castigated for the way they keep each other