What Gang Leader for a Day offers its readers is insight into the real shape of the criminal underground. First of all, Sudhir realizes through a quite serious adjustment process that the "underground" element is not nearly as underground in low-income areas as it is in nicer areas like the places he has lived. By choosing to investigate the lives of gangsters, he chooses a descent into chaos, and what he sees is that the "chaotic" underworld of crime is orderly and balanced.
This means that humans have similar modes of existence in the light of legal processes and in the darkness of criminal operations. He notices while being the gang leader that his role is similar to that of a CEO. He has governmental authority over an army, and he has economic authority over business ventures. This can be seen through the lens of two conclusions; one can say gangs are like businesses and governments, or one can say businesses and governments are like gangs.
The first insight is obvious; gangs operating in networks of authority structures is insightful, because it means that the human animal builds essentially similar systems for power structures. The opposite insight is disturbing; what really separates the big businesses and governments of the world apart from gangs? It is their control of law; when businesses and law-makers are in cahoots, the economic interests of certain groups of people are essentially gang operations that are free to operate openly, because their actions are deemed legal by the government. The difference is the jurisprudence of the government.
