The White Tiger

The White Tiger

          Balram Halwai, the protagonist in the White Tiger by Aravind Adiga, uses manipulation and criminal behavior to climb from Indian servant to businessman throughout the novel, and because of that he looks at his acts as justifiable or “acts of entrepreneurship” (9).  In India, each person is born into a certain caste, and Halwai felt the only way to grow along with India was to commit criminal acts. The comparison of the life of an elite and a servant are a constant theme in the novel. “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“ (64).  The only way to leave those castes is to come into money, but those that come from the Darkness don’t have money. Halwai is intrigued by the rapid growth of India and desperately wants to be apart of it. As the novel goes on you see Halwai step out of his role as servant and descend into a corrupt entrepeneur. He starts his decend with blackmailing the other drivers to get his position as Mr. Ashok’s driver in Dehli, along with no longer sending his family money despite his promotion in salary. Halwai even knows and sees the change in himself,“The tale of how I was corrupted from a sweet, innocent village fool into a citified fellow full of debauchery, depravity, and wickedness“ (189).  I feel this novel correlates with the phrase “he sold his soul to the devil“, because without his evil actions Halwai would still simply a servant to Mr. Ashok.  Even once Halwai has killed Mr. Ashok and began his life as an entrepeneur, he still uses manipulation and criminal acts to continue moving up in the castes of India. He pays off the police to help his business profit, and he accepts the demise of his family “ I have woken up, and the rest of you are still sleeping, and that is the only difference between us. I shouldn’t think of them at all. My family“ (271).  Halwai shares a lot of similarities with the character Salim in Slumdog Millionaire, both characters strive for money and embrace the globalization of India. And through this both characters become as corrupt, if not more than the people who they called boss. They both use murder, lies, and corruption to get the things they want. And their lives most as quickly as the cities they “run.“

 

Globalization in India

A major theme in The White Tiger is the globalization of India.  With this globalization there has been major corruption, and huge lines drawn between the different classes. This is shown throughout the novel as Balram commits crimes to climb through the classes from the "darkness." I found an article about an Indian journalist, Siddhartha Deb, set out to explore the true impact of globalization on his homeland by working undercover in an Indian call center. Throughout his time undercover he uncovers the dark side of Indian Prosperity. 
Undercover in India-beautiful-and-damned

"You have at the very top end of the country ... something like 66 billionaires. And these numbers might be slightly old, but there are probably a few more billionaires since I last checked. But 66 billionaires who seem to have something like 30 percent of the country's wealth. On the other end, you have like 800 million people — over 800 million people — living on less than $2 a day. When you have a country where 40 percent of the children under the age of 5 suffer from malnutrition, it seems to me that these contrasts aren't really healthy. They're not just differences. They are really like living different worlds within the same country."- This is a quote from Deb on the wealth disparity in India and I think that is really illustrates what Balrum is talking about throughout the novel. 

 This is a YouTube video of Former country director of ActionAid India on BBC Hard Talk discussing the effects of globalization on India.