Thus, shorn of the intricate weaving of the individual and the social, the depiction of poverty in these novels becomes packaged as yet another item of interest to the Western market. Some critics have correctly identified this tendency as ‘slum tourism’ and others are concerned about how the sudden popularity of Dark India is symptomatic of the way in which the image of the country is ‘enmeshed in an unending process of cultural commodification’. (75)