In 2012, when Abhijit V Banerjee was yet to win his Nobel gong, he had written an op-ed article that correlated lower middle-class and working class Indians' lack of physical space at home - say, six or more persons to one or two rooms - with lack of space for intimacy. This, he explained, caused a huge collective libidinal pressure, driving the acting out of sexual desire by India's male under- and lower middle-class 'outdoors', or even 'underground' into criminal manifestations.