Games Indians Play - V. Raghunathan

We have heard about the famous anecdote of Indian Crabs not being covered with a lid while transported across the oceans. This book takes up issues like this and explores the questions we sometimes ask ourselves as Indians - 'Why are we the way we are?'

Most of the things that we do look so usual for us that we accept them at the face value never questioning the logic behind our actions. This book is a summary of the efforts which Prof. Raghunathan has made towards analyzing the behavior in terms of Game Theory, and Behavioral Economics.

The book tries to look at the 'Indianness of Indians' as detached as possible checking the personal biases at every stage and looking at answering the apparent paradoxes that emerge. Some of the questions that he tries to answer are - Why are we a nation that is individually so smart and collectively so naive? Why do we mistake talk for action? Why is our self-worth massaged only if we have the ‘authority’ to break rules? Why are we among the world’s most corrupt? Why do we jump red lights? Why do we dump our garbage at the neighbour’s doorstep?

In the last chapter Prof, tries to link the Gita with the concept of game theory; this I believe is a very interesting attempt at interpretation of the slokas from the Gita with a game theory perspective. These can always be debated and a new understanding be derived from them, none the less it is very interesting interpretation.

This attempt by Prof, should be only the starting point and a lot more needs to be done in taking the subject of understanding the 'Indianness of Indians' and make it a main stream of study.