The author of great book ‘The White Tiger’ said in an interview to Times of India:
Your novels are tense with the conflict between old and new India. As a child of Nehru's India, are you suspicious of liberalisation and what all that money's doing to us?
"I wish I were a child of Nehru's India! But I was born in 1974. I was a child of the harsher socialist regime imposed by Mrs Gandhi. I am not — and will never be — an opponent of the great economic boom initiated by Dr Manmohan Singh and Prime Minister Narasimha Rao. In fact, I think it saved India from ruin and stagnation. I remember we had to bribe people in Mangalore in the old days just to get a confirmed ticket on Indian Airlines.
In 1990, I stood first in Karnataka in the annual SSLC (year 10) exams. When I came to Bangalore to collect an award from the education minister, I was humiliated by the rich boys there — all of whom I had beaten — because I had a thick accent when I spoke English and I did not know who Lionel Richie was.
The divisions between small town and big city India have been broken down by liberalisation. I'm grateful for this...I do think people have a right to question how fast liberalisation is going and whether it's damaging some sections of society. In the short term, India might lag China if we're more introspective about our growth — but in the long term, we will surely outrun them. Those who interpret my novels as opposing liberalisation are misreading them. They're marked by ambivalence, not opposition, to the changes... Money itself is amoral. It can liberate people as easily as it can destroy them. As I said, I'm not opposed to the great economic boom going on now. My role as a novelist is only to dramatize certain conflicts taking place because of the generation of so much new wealth. In "Last Man in Tower", I urge people not to regard the developer simply as the villain, but to consider his positive attributes as well. Nor is Masterji, his opponent, a spokesman for me. He has his failings."
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