I recently had occasion to visit India for the first time to speak at a conference put on by the media conglomerate India Today. Sadly my visit was very short, just a toe-touch. Still, it was fascinating from start to finish. On the way over, one of the flight attendants told me she was using her down time in New Delhi to have a complete-body medical examination at Max Healthcare for about $350. Medical tourism in action. The final event of the conclave was a raucous Q&A between former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and an audience of Indian elites who weren’t buying his assertions that Pakistan has the potential to be a good neighbor.
My experience was heightened considerably by the book I was reading at the time, The White Tiger, by the young journalist Aravind Adiga. It is one of the most thrilling novels I’ve ever read: pungent, evocative, brutally depressing, outrageously funny.
Aravind AdigaIt is a novel of class and caste, told from the lower ranks, in which misery and aspiration battle for supremacy. Along the way, you learn a great deal about modern India. I’ve also been reading two good non-fiction books about India: Maximum City, by Suketu Mehta, and Imagining India, by Nandan Nilekani. I would recommend both of them; but The White Tiger is an absolute must-read.
The book is a best-seller and has won awards including the 2008 Man Booker Prize. Writing for the Telegraph, Amrit Dhillon called it a “new departure in India by [its portrayal of] the emotions, sorrows, and aspirations of the hitherto invisible poor.” This portrayal has, not surprisingly, caused an uproar among Indians — as, more recently, Slumdog Millionaire did.
Adiga was born in Madras (now Chennai), and studied at Columbia and Oxford. He was a South Asia correspondent for TIME and has also been published in the Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal. His second novel, Between the Assassinations, will be published in June.
Adiga has agreed to take questions from Freakonomics readers about The White Tiger, Indian society … or even Bollywood ad campaigns and autorickshaw pricing. So post your questions in the comments section below. As with past Q&A’s, we will post his answers here in a few days.
Addendum: Adiga answers your questions here.
and 
. You can also watch it on 
My wife is Indian (I am not) and I recently had the chance to spend two weeks in her country – Mumbai, the Tea plantations in Munar and with my new in-laws. My overall impression was positive. While there are some fits and starts common to any new democracy (I was almost swept up in a mini-riot over a slain politician), there is no denying the direction of India is onward and upward. So why, I wonder, does America practically tie itself at the hip to China when India, the world’s largest democracy, seems like such a better fit? Is it just the economics or, as my wife suggests, a holdover from Inida-Soviet Union alliances of the past?
Unfortunately, India, a secular country by its constitution, is turning more in to nationalist hindu country as days go by. By the Pakistan becomes unstable, India will fear itself and will eventually lead to its division in 17 small nations.
It seems that for a long time Indians had limited confidence in India – always complaining about the country, deploring its economic “Hindu rate of growth” as it was called, and in the case of the elite trying to distance themselves from it culturally (as noted well in V.S. Naipaul’s “India: A Wounded Civilization”).
But in the last 10 years, and coinciding with increasing economic growth as the economy has opened up, Indians have found a new confidence – captured largely by political slogans such as “India Shining” (popularized by the BJP). I find that some of the backlash against Slumdog Millionaire by some of the elite in India (including such figures as Bollywood legend Amitabh Bachchan) and indeed “The White Tiger” has to be understood in this context. Naturally, ignoring 400m people below the poverty line and wishing them away is reprehensible. But to what extent does this backlash represent India’s psyche wishing to remain in a state of self-denial or otherwise exhibiting a deep fear of returning to the insecurities of the past?
Where do you see India in next 25 years – culturally, politically, Technologically and Human relations wise?
Arvind, I really liked how the book started and it gripped me quite well to the end .. But somehow I had a feeling as if I was looking for more. The narrative is very honest and very very true… but it was just a narrative. Probably that was what you really wanted from this piece, but as a reader, I kept looking for more ..
Nevertheless , Congratulations on the success of the book.
Thanks for letting us know about this book.
There is uproar and protest about everything famous within India. There is one group of people or other always joining the impromptu ‘protest’ festivals. So, if you see that there is an ‘uproar’ against ‘slumdog millionaire’, it just shows that it has become famous in India.
Mohamed @1: Good relations exist between India and Nepal and most other neighbors to most extent, except one. About that one neighbor: if your smooth-talking neighbor’s dogs rampages your house,tearing and destroying every thing on a weekly basis, what would you do ?
Not sure where you’re getting your information Mohamed. India has never been an aggressor in its history except when repelling invaders. Better read up on your history
I do have a question for Mr. Adiga: what are you doing with the profits from your book?