The Manu Joseph interview: ‘I have a strange split relationship with public opinion’

Manu

Joseph’s new book, Why the Poor Don’t Kill Us, arrives with the quiet provocation that has become his signature. Framed as a series of essays rather than a conventional polemic, it interrogates inequality, power and resentment in contemporary India without offering the easy consolations of ideology.

Throughout its 280 pages, Joseph is less interested in moral outrage than in the psychology of hierarchy: why anger simmers but rarely explodes, why humiliation is absorbed rather than avenged, and how societies remain stable despite deep economic and social fractures. Published by Aleph Book Company, the book reads like a sustained act of intellectual contrarianism, asking questions many prefer to skirt. It’s biggest win is its stubborn refusal to flatter or flatten neither the privileged nor those on the fringes.

Over the past two decades, Joseph has carved out a distinctive career at the intersection of journalism and literature. As a reporter and editor at publications such as Mint and Open Magazine, he has reported on politics, business and culture with a skepticism sharpened by close observation. In fiction, novels such as Serious Men, Miss Laila, and Armed and Dangerous established him as a writer attuned to ambition, self-deception and the absurdities of social mobility.

Across forms, Joseph has consistently favored uncomfortable truths over fashionable positions. In this exclusive interview, he reflects on his first non-fiction book, why he thinks Indian poverty is a design flaw, considers journalists street fighters, his disapproval for the word contrarian in relation to him, and more.

The title 'Why The Poor Don’t Kill Us' is deliberately unsettling. Were you aiming to provoke moral discomfort, or to expose a blind spot in how India’s elite think about inequality? What went behind the coming together of this title?

It could be unsettling to a few people, but to me it is more of a literary lament. In fact, I took about eight years to decide whether it is a book and not just probably a powerful chapter inside a book, chiefly because the term ‘why the poor don't kill us’ is a literary lament, while still being a question. And I was wondering if the answer can be book-length. Is a literary lament a serious question — that was my concern even though I knew there were some answers. Eventually I began forming the book only when I was certain that I already had the arguments to answer the question.

A strange kind of insult that I face is from people who have read the book and many of whom who have even liked the book, who ask me, so tell me, ‘why don't the poor kill us?’ While the book is widely perceived as a psychological biography of India, the truth is it does answer the question, just that many of the answers have been right under our nose.

In 'Serious Men and The Illicit Happiness of Other People,' rage simmers beneath humor. In this book, the humor feels sharper, almost angrier. Has your relationship with anger changed as a writer—or as a citizen?

This is a very interesting question. Serious Men and The Illicit Happiness of Other People, were angry in different ways. Serious Men derived the underdog's point of view from my own poverty, in Bombay when I arrived at the age of 21 and lived in a chawl. I used up a lot of rage from that.

Meanwhile, The Illicit Happiness of Other People, is about my childhood in Chennai. It is about what happens when a whole family is unlucky. So that has a different kind of rage. By the time I wrote Why the Poor Don’t Kill Us, I'd done reasonably well for myself. So, you’re right to observe that it is a very different kind of anger.

I do understand that the human condition is not perfect and there would always be victims of the strong. But Indian poverty is a design flaw. There's simply no reason, for example, why life should be so difficult for half of India in this era.

You argue that India is not a country on the brink of violent class revolt. Is that an observation, a relief, or an anxiety—and what would it mean if you were wrong?

It is an observation and a journalism-grade opinion. Many reasons why there is a peace between the social classes are hinged on some misunderstandings of a section of the population. Misunderstandings are the most underrated powerful forces in a society. For example, the role of false hope, which saves us. The false hope in higher education, for instance, the idea that if you crack an entrance exam or go to college the poor will cease to be poor. Now this idea is fraying.

What if the reasons for the peace are wrong, you ask? I do not believe I'm wrong, it is just that the reasons can become obsolete. The most potent reason why the poor would revolt in India is when the second rung of the society moves to topple the top run. This is the only way revolution happens in a society. Not when the poor run out of their homes angry and topple the government miraculously and go back home, claiming no part in the new power system.

Revolution happens when the second rung of the society wants to topple the top rung. And it can happen that a second rung, a powerful second rung of the elite stirs up the poor and creates disorder. This has already happened in India, through hindutva and the transformation of India in the past 20 years into a culturally conservative country. This is a creation of the second rung of the elite, who were not Anglicized, who were not the global elite, who felt repressed under the Gandhis and the posh club, and created a new society by using religion.

Your critics often accuse you of intellectual elitism, while your readers praise your clarity. How consciously do you write against consensus, and when does contrarianism risk becoming a reflex rather than an insight?

I dislike the word contrarian in relation to me because even though, etymologically, it does not mean anything deliberate, it has that sense, that he does things to provoke people. But I simply don't do that. While I don't deliberately go against consensus, I do know when I do. And so, in fact, I prepare very well. I have a strange split relationship with public opinion. I can immediately and intuitively see when the general public opinion is wrong, I still have a certain respect for consensus, and I try to argue against myself. A lot of ideas that I have in a file, which is strangely called ideas, have not left the file because I feel they are not strong enough to go against a consensus. But sometimes I am surprised by how things that I feel are very obvious are counterintuitive to most people.

For example, one of the powerful reasons why the poor don’t kill us is mentioned in passing in half a paragraph in my book because I thought it was very obvious. It is because they don’t want to, they are not killers, hardship does not create criminals. Poverty does not make the poor criminals. But I realize now it is not a common view. There is a deep and widespread view that poverty is good enough for the poor to kill, that it can make normal people criminals. But this is absolutely not true. Poverty can empower potential criminals by providing victimhood and bitterness, but the state of being poor is not a natural pathway to criminality. In crime, serious crime, personality always trumps circumstance.

You often describe yourself as allergic to sentimentality. Yet this book depends on a kind of moral wager: that restraint by the poor is a civilizational virtue. How do you reconcile emotional distance with ethical stakes?

I feel that reportage and opinion journalism should not be sentimental because journalism is the language of truth. While it can be literary, even beautiful, I feel sentimentality is a form of naiveté. And one thing journalism should not be is naive. A novel can be, a poem can be, but not journalism. Journalists, to me, are street fighters. They need to have street smartness. Yet, all of journalism, from a distant view, is sentimental. If you look at it, journalism has an automatic moral compass, at a profession-level, like medicine. And that is extremely sentimental. But at a sentence level, at an article level, it need not be and I feel it should not be.

I feel that the emotional distance from a literary point of view adds to the credibility of an article or an argument, no matter what the ethical stakes are. That this is sometimes perceived as heartless is a problem with the perception and not with the journalistic style.

Your prose is economical, even dismissive of ornament. Is this minimalism ideological—a resistance to what you see as Indian verbosity—or simply the voice that feels most honest to you?

Very interesting question. Like many Indian writers in English, I did go through a phase of beautiful writing and I think I wasted some years in its hold. Even though I had a voice, I was wasting my voice in ornamentation. And maybe I have now swung the other way. But there is also a practical reason for the change.

As a full-time salaried journalist, I never used to write so much. Everything was so precious. In fact, when I became the editor of Open Magazine, I could use that position to ensure that I wrote only when I felt like it. It was some kind of a luxury. But after I left Open Magazine, I became a columnist who had to write every week, along with working on books and screenplays.

I had to develop a form of journalism where I could write fast. I now take six to about eight hours to write a column, which is much longer than what most columnists possibly take. But most of this time is devoted to arguments, the actual writing time I have greatly reduced, chiefly through a new kind of prose, at least new to me, which is that it is sparse, and it does not aim to be beautiful.

When you look at India today, are you more afraid of an uprising by the poor—or of the moral complacency of the comfortable, including people like us?

Even though the upper class is a practical class, it has not understood that if compassion for those who are unlucky does not come automatically to us, at least for practical reasons, we need to develop a kind of systemic compassion for those who are unlucky. Yet, most of the upper class really thinks that they're rich because of some nonsense called merit and that they are really smart and that the poor are this way because they are not very smart. And they proceed to treat those under them poorly.

I'm more worried about the fact that the lower middle-class and the poor themselves treat those below them even worse. So there is a lot of unhappiness and bitterness in this society, as opposed to say, if you look at East Asian countries like even Thailand, there is so much respect in the society for each other. I feel that the time has come when the upper class creates a process of training everyone to live well, with respect and giving respect. We need a society where respect is the underlying force. When I put it this way, I know it sounds very naive.

What is your hope with this book?

I hope to change once and for all the way Indians think about their nation and of human nature. This might sound very grand, but I feel that a book should have a huge ambition.