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Is Balram in The White Tiger a reliable narrator and a realistic character?
Quick answer:
Balram in The White Tiger is not entirely reliable as a narrator due to his anti-hero nature and morally dubious actions, making him sometimes dishonest. However, he offers a realistic portrayal of India's "colossal underclass" and the stark social inequalities. His narrative, while biased, reveals important truths about the desperation and struggles of the working class amidst India's economic growth.
Balram is not meant to give us a full, unbiased view of Indian society. No one character in any work of fiction could ever do that, since individuals, even when they are part of a single society, do not possess 100% universal experiences based on their social class, gender, ethnicity, etc.
Balram is meant to give the reader insight into just one part of Indian society: "the colossal underclass," as author Aravind Adiga puts it. Balram is a working man—not doing the absolute worst jobs one could get, but hardly a very powerful man in the social pecking order when the events of the novel start out.
Balram is not entirely reliable since he is after all an anti-hero out to make himself look good. He also does some morally dubious things in order to achieve his goals, including lying, so that might make the reader question if Balram's dishonesty...
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extends to his position as narrator. However, the novel is mostly a socialsatire, to the line between truth and falsehood isn't a terribly big theme.
In many ways Balam is offered to readers of the White Tiger as a point of view from which we can see through some of the hypocrisy and prejudice of Indian society. Because he is the lens through which we see India as readers of the work, we are tempted to treat him at face value as a reliable narrator. On the other hand, there are two reasons we should be wary of so doing. First, India is a country of over one billion people, and no one story or perspective can do more than give us a narrow and limited perspective on so complex a society. Second, the White Tiger is constructed in the genre of an extended dramatic monologue, in which, typically, the main point of the work is the unreliability of the narrator to gradually unmasks his own limitations. The events of the story point to Balam being willing to lie, steal, and murder for his own advantage, and equally prone to blaming Indian society for those acts – but since most Indians are not thieves and murderers, one can see that some of Balam’s condemnation of India may be influenced by his efforts to rationalize or justify his own criminal acts. As a character, Balam is somewhat realistic -- but far from typical (murder is not an everyday act in India).