The White Tiger is what Taxi Driver would have been, If Scorsese had made that in India. Or is it the Nightcrawler? 
 India is two countries in one: an India in light, and an India in darkness. The Ocean brings light to my country. Every place on the map of India near Ocean is well-off. But the river brings darkness to India - the black river. 
 I find the overuse of Flowers of Algernon Charlie style narrative, in general, a cheap pretext to escape the nuances of language, and a cheat code to obtain unlimited writers license. The letter format, though justiciable with character's pesrsona, didn't work with me either. But it would be a huge injustice If I don't acknowledge how well the two(or many) sides of India was(were) captured, subsiding to the arguement of the country being in multiple timelines at the same time or being the land of contradictions. 
 The brilliance of Adiga, in my opinion was protagonist's Ishmael(the concsious gorilla) outsider look on upper middle class from the lowest strata. Munna, comes from a caste of Halwai(sweetmaker), one of the working class laborers, in a village reminiscent of old movies. The inadequacies of wealth, entitlements, gender equality, educational system are well captured in the narrative and could be used to analyze the conditions of rural India. One illustration would be this scene where, for school records part, Munna's (boy in hindi) name gets changed to 'Balram' by the registering official, and how it immediately becomes his official name at home n village, with virtually zero fuss. Or, the plight of school where the teacher is on a gandhian strike withhelding his lectures against non payment of wages, while occasionally compensating his plight by selling off the subcidiced school supplies. 
 There are three main diseases in the country : typhoid, cholera and election fever. The last one is the worst; it makes people talk and talk about things they have no say in. 
 The most obvious metaphor for reader would be the Genesis old light and darkness, in the ying yang treatment of characters. It also offers a critique to the democracy, with his letters adressing to the 'Supreme Leader' of China, ocassional mentions of the 'Great Socialist' and spectre of 'Gandhi' through out. Balram climbs up the ladder, slowly, using debatable morale and becomes a self sufficient entrepreneur in the 'city of Bangalore', from his humble beginnings in his village near Dhanbad. The uneducated Balram seems to have understood the idea of 'globalization', better than his foreign learned Mr. Ashok and Pinky Madam. Another possible metaphor that I noticed was the usage of animal names for characters, like in Animal Farm, quite serving its purpose too, if read carefully. 
 In the old days there were one thousand castes and destinies in India. 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. 
 Adiga's narrative does a valid take on complexities of class and caste in Indian society, and how narrow an escape from same would be in a village and how easy the escape is in a big city that can offer anonymity. Only western equilent, though highly innacurate, would be Industrial capitalists and labouring poor of 19th centuries from Dickens novels. The darkness and light analogy prevails again in the suburbs of Delhi, Gurgaon which are designed to look and feel more like first world countries, so that the rich will feel home, despite the slum and dirt nearby. Even though my first sentiment was to tag this book as the work of India bashing elite, written for the kind of elite, whose idea and inclined outlook on India is Slumdog Millionaire; the complex analysis this novel can offer on multiple subject baffles me, with the temptation of extending the same at the expense of more words. 
 Even with all these analysis, the ones that are still in scope and afterthoughts, my feelings about the book remain the same. I didn't enjoy it.