Link: My Amazon Review is here, should you wish to vote on its usefulness.
W. H. Auden said “Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.” As a consummate buyer, reader and possessor of books, I will extend that to say that some books can be remembered for being egregiously bad. My abnormal love for books means that I try to give the author a lot of rope, benefit of doubt or whatever you want to call my generosity of spirit. I have found it hard to find that generosity in me for this book which I review below.
Thanks to my lovely sibling in India, I received a copy of ‘Games Indians Play’ by V Raghunathan. I daresay that having first heard about it on a blog, I had indeed asked for it to be sent to me. Would you not have done so if you were curious about Indians and someone had tempted you by offering a game theoretical explanation of at least some of the mysteries?
Having read the 150+ page book in some 3 hours, I am now considering refunding my sibling the price of the book and apologising for the hassle in procuring it, then travelling to my cousin’s house to deliver it so it could be carried to London.
The root of the fundamental flaw in this book is explained by the author under ‘Some Disclaimers’ in Chapter 1. He acknowledges that the book is not aimed at any specific group of readers in particular, a targeting problem that may still not explain the non-uniform, almost amateurish, style of writing. In many places, the arguments are so stretched that they become rants and successfully forcing me to make a cup of tea to stay awake and interested; in other places, the language is a stretch for non-Indian readers, settle as it does into Indian style of usage.
The disclaimers also say it is not a research based book, but I think it is bordering on intellectual laziness when the author often mentions in the passing his own experiments, without clarifying how these were conducted and if the outcomes could be verified at all. One is left to guess that many of these experiments were conducted on his MBA students both at IIM-Ahmedabad (my business school) and SDA Bocconi. Either way, MBA students are hardly representative of the population and if you believe the negative press about MBAs, probably too focused on money making.
Another disclaimer says this is not a text book on game theory or behavioural economics but the contents say otherwise. There is much more theoretical discussion rather than ‘applied’ explanations of what the author set out to do according to the cover – explain ‘why we are the way we are’.
One disclaimer, where the author’s academic affiliation shows,says that the book’s conclusions are at worst conjectural and at best plausible hypotheses for further research. Having read it, I shall settle for the former.
The author lays a grand claim upfront that he has a 12-canon taxonomy for ‘Indianness’ – if you are an Indian, a class of people which the author says are “probably the most intelligent people in the world”, you will more than gasp at the laundry list of ills which make us look like members of some crazed despot’s army rather than citizens of a large developing nation and democracy:
- low trustworthiness
- being privately smart and publicly dumb
- fatalist outlook
- being too intelligent for our own good
- abysmal sense of public hygiene
- lack of self-regulation and sense of fairness
- reluctance to penalise wrong conduct in others
- mistaking talk for action
- deep-rooted corruption and a flair for free-riding
- inability to follow or implement systems
- a sense of self-worth that is massaged only if we have the ‘authority’ to break rules
- propensity to look for loop holes in laws
Those, who know me or read my writing on issues concerning India, probably know that my cognition sometimes impedes my ability to feel undiluted devotion for any person or entity. Far be it from me for being jingoistic about India (or about Britain, where I live) but I find these broad generalisations smacking of desperate attempts of the kind ‘Oh I have started all this so I better finish’.
Leaving that thought aside, let’s look at the book.
Chapter 2 claims that somehow an illiterate vendor who can do mental maths suggests Indians are amongst the most intelligent in the world. A logical leap at best, especially when efforts are made immediately to establish this as some kind of sacrosanct truth by comparing with systems-oriented jobsworths (a later chapter addresses why Indians do not follow systems) working in retail outside India. He then extends the argument meandering through stranger examples to say Indians are seemingly more rational and intelligent than those in Western societies, but our individual utilities do not maximise our collective utility.
Chapter 3 focuses on the Prisoner’s dilemma and the main message is the Indian inability to focus on the long-term (NPV if you are into MBA-speak) for fear of losing short-term gains. The argument is extended to explain why Indians do not champion issues citing the lament that one person’s efforts will make no difference.
Chapter 4 on iterative prisoner’s dilemma is more theoretical and focuses on explaining Axelrod’s experiments.
Chapter 5 asks if competition can lead to collaboration and many more examples are discussed. The chapter ends with suggesting how being simple, nice, forgiving and self-righteously provokable gets us ahead further. Hmm, okay!
At 30 pages, chapter 6 is the longest and asks questions about fairness, self-regulation, willingness to confront wrong behaviour in others, and incipient flouting of rules, abuse of office or authority and ironically, for a long-winded chapter, a section on long-winded arguments. It is however also the chapter that uses most stories and illustrations to advance the original aim of the book – using tools of behavioural economics to explain some Indian behaviours.
Chapter 7 is about free riding and asks if Indians are the world’s biggest free-riders. In fewer than a full 10 pages, the author discusses greed, fear and corruption as variations on free-riding. This chapter could have been longer to expand on some of the better ideas in the book. As the book progresses, the early awkwardness disappears, although not totally as it does rear its head in places.
Chapter 8 on systemic chaos, or Indians’ inability to follow systems without bending any rules is actually a compendium of various stories of corruption, bending of rules etc with air travel being a major theme and cricket, academia and private sector tussling with the government being minor stories. Not much game theory in this chapter and I could not help but notice that fewer than 10% of the Indian population uses airplanes to travel. To use a large number of cases from a minority population to generalise to a whole billion? Not ok I think, even for popular reading type books.
Chapter 9 resolves a poser from earlier in the book. Nothing upsets me more in print than avoidable errors in spelling. Repeatedly misspelling ‘Shrodinger’ in the text, when the reference in the appendix is spelt properly, is nothing but editorial laziness in my view.
Chapter 10 on Bhagwadgita is probably the most interesting but since the author says he is sharing his personal ‘awakening’ to the message of the book, I shall leave it to you to make your own mind up. Even if the book were meant for no specific reader group in particular, mixing religion and spirituality with a book purporting to be about game theory to me is just reinforcing the stereotype of Indians as beings of great spirituality.
Not enough game theory, not enough behavioural economics, not much by way of explanation either. In other words, a mistake to judge the book by its cover, the preceding hype, the fawning reviews and even the benefit of doubt given to the author, who did teach some of my best friends (but not me, me no finance major, me marketing type).
Star rating: 2 out of 5 (also 9 out of 10 marks for being the first book to have disappointed me so thoroughly)