Ecologies of Inequality: Urban Development and Human Fragility in Aravind Adiga’s Last Man in Tower

Abstract

Urban development in contemporary India is often celebrated as a sign of progress and globalization, yet it produces deep fissures of inequality, displacement, and social fragility. Aravind Adiga’s novel Last Man in Tower (2011) dramatizes these tensions by situating a middle-class housing society at the intersection of neoliberal urban expansion and individual human vulnerability. This article examines the novel through the lens of ecologies of inequality, exploring how material development, class divisions, and fragile human relationships create a contested urban ecology. Drawing on theories from ecocriticism, urban studies, and postcolonial critique, the article argues that Adiga’s text exposes the paradoxes of modernity in Mumbai: economic growth that erodes community, urban space that privileges profit over people, and fragile human lives caught in the machinery of neoliberalism. By analyzing themes of displacement, aging, social ecology, and resistance, the study situates Last Man in Tower as both a local narrative of Mumbai’s redevelopment politics and a global commentary on human precarity under capitalism. The findings highlight Adiga’s critical role in reimagining Indian English fiction as a site of resistance, foregrounding how literature reflects and critiques the ecological dimensions of inequality in the twenty-first century.