Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger: Precursor Narrative of Upcoming Unicorns in India under Globalization

Abstract

India in the turn of the millennium has encountered with liberalization, globalization and privatization subsequently resulting in paradigm shift encompassing all activities along with trade and commerce. This transnational and transcultural phenomenon has brought to India advanced technologies with economic opportunities to provide talented and hardworking minds to grow by new exposure and unbiased platforms whicheventually proved boon to the victims of restricted stratified society. To the parallel of legacy of family business, ran the entrepreneurship aspirations by many newcomers in the field to claim the share in emerging economy which had witnessed drastic change with the arrival of greater ideas and dreams. Aravind Adiga’s Man Booker awardee novel The White Tiger, published in 2008 has encapsulated the nuances of globalized contemporary society and foreseen the trend of entrepreneurships and surge of startups to change the scenario to great extent in near future. The protagonist of the narrative, Balram Halwai, a village boy from Bihar emerges as a successful entrepreneur in the cosmopolitan and global backdrop of Bengaluru; the silicon valley of India. The IT/BT revolution in India post-Y2K has strengthened its socioeconomic status in global forum. Recently India has displaced the UK and occupied third positionnext to the USA and China in terms of the number of unicorns created in 2021. This paper attempts to analyse the dynamics of globalizationas a paradigm shift as portrayed in The White Tiger.