However, while Ramin Bahrani’s film casts an empathetic look at those left behind by conventional ideas of ‘progress’, there are moments where it falters. And the film’s weakest links are well and truly embedded in the original book itself.

This is no doubt because Adiga – a middle-class, Chennai-born writer who attended Columbia and Oxford before working for Time magazine – is writing about a lived experience considerably removed from his own and often resorts to unambiguous binaries (“I am in the Light now, but I was born and raised in Darkness”, “These days, there are just two castes: Men with Big Bellies, and Men with Small Bellies”).

The book, too, relies on well-worn stereotypes (elections determined by a single man stamping ballots), and caricaturish characters (corrupt politicians, ruthless elite). As such, what begins as an indictment of India’s endemic inequity and corruption eventually becomes yet another story of entrepreneurial triumph. Indeed, the titlular ‘white tiger’ refers to that rare individual who can pull themselves up by the bootstraps, no matter their background.

By staying steadfastly faithful to the source material, the film repeats these sadly reductive accounts. Which explains why the ending feels almost glib, veering into the excesses of the gangster genre.

The White Tiger review: “The Netflix flick is a great film, but I felt let down by the tired stereotypes”