Travel Book Logs

Games Indians Play: Why We Are the Way We Are
Raghunathan V

On my trip to Goa last week I picked up this interesting book which gave me an insight on what is an interesting question perhaps all Indians ask ourselves – Why are We the Way we Are?   Its the kind of question that dogs me everytime I walk around our country and maybe more when I travel abroad.  What causes the massive systematic failures that plague our country?  If you are Indian you know what the heck this is all about – even more unsettling is that on further investigation, the answer is, perhaps we don’t!

In Raghunathan, I find a kindred soul who like me has walked down the same path.   Its nice to see some of the same questions I’ve asked or even worse been asked about our fair land.  What the hell do you say?  Too often I see people retreat to our history and even worse to our population problem.  You can almost anticipate people saying “Its complicated!”    Most of the time its exhausting trying to explain India’s vagaries and unfortunately its big failures because in truth that is what our signature problems are – corruption, pollution, traffic apathy, lack of public hygiene etc.

Unlike others who resort to above said  “reasons” V Raghunathan applies an interesting blend of behavioral economics and game theory.  Ever since I read Freakanomics by Steve Levitt and Stephen Dubner, I have pondered the potential of the behavioral economics approach to explain the India situation.   Raghunathan goes one step further and brings in game theory to help grasp difficult to explain scenarios.   The Prisoners Dilemma in particular illustrates the familiar scenario of when parties or individuals are worse off by pursuing their own selfish interests.   It should be mentioned that game theory does not predict the outcomes of human situations but it does a darn good job of giving us a good idea once you know how to set things up.

Interestingly reading Games Indians Play has made me think in terms of Cooperation and Defection strategies.  A defect signal goes off in my brain every time I see something like a piece of trash on the streets or a filthy toilet in an airport.  It gives me satisfaction to think cooperate when I am in a nice new building or facility like the Hyderabad Airport.  Its a great thing to see the world around you as a great big game theory scenario.   I’m relieved and vindicated to see that one of the most successful strategies in the book is the approach which employs the Tit for Tat strategy or as Raghunathan calls it – the Gentlemen’s Strategy.     Terms like Mass Defections have entered my mental vocablary to describe systematic failures like our political system or the pollution in our cities.

Does this all make sense in terms of actually solving the problems?  I would say yes to the effect that once you realise the consequences of the cooperate – defect actions we take have a profound effect on the larger scenario it gives us the insight to understand and perhaps change the end result at large.  I leave you with an excerpt from the book title.

Raghunathan tackles the question by putting under the scanner our attitudes towards rationality and irrationality, egotism and selfishness, our penchant for antagonism and competition, and our aversion to collaboration and cooperation. Drawing examples from the way we behave in day-to-day situations—from our attitude towards a cheating vendor to our attitude in a joint venture; from our tearing off a page from a library book to the way we leave our public toilets—he shows how in the long run even the most self-serving of us—businessmen, politicians, bureaucrats, common people—stand to profit more if we were to adopt a little self-regulation, give fairness a little more credence and cooperate instead of cheat.

Not a bad place to start thinking about changing the way we are.

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