[Jayaprakash]

One angle to such complaint is that writers like Adiga are somehow 'letting the side down' by exposing India's ugly side to the world. That, frankly, is nonsense. I think a writer's allowed to be a little more than a national propagandist. We read enough stories about the sordid sides of American, European, African and other Asian societies - surely we can accept that we have some diry linen that might bear airing as well?

Adiga seems to have seen a bit of the other side of Indian society in his travels as a journalist. These glimpses, he says in interviews, were what inspired him to tell their story. Certainly, if the middle classes were not allowed to write about those less well-off, much of literature, including Dickens' novels and most French realism would have to be written off.