India, July 1 -- Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance, in this fiction philistine's view, is one of the best English language novels on independent India written for its time. The plot revolves around socio-economically oppressive structures in rural India and how they trigger migration to cities where the market and the state, along with its political underlings, are the chief oppressors rather than feudalism. The excesses of Emergency and communal riots following Indira Gandhi's assassination figure in the novel as well, which was published in 1995, not very far from the events in 1975 and 1984.

More than three decades after Mistry published his most critically acclaimed work, one could argue that his plot held a more pessimistic view of t...