Recently read an interview of V. Raghunathan about his book "Games Indians Play". I was planning on reading the book since the title sounded interesting... but after reading the interview (available at Knowledge@Wharton website; Requires 'free' user registration), I must say I'm put-off.
I think the author (unfortunately, bragging his ex-IIMA fame, and IMHO, brining bad name to it) has taken a very narrow and unconvincing view on Indian psyche. It is absolutely naive to say, for example, that the tendency to defect in a Prisoners Dilemma (PD) situation is greater in India than elsewhere. Or, that Indians cannot work well in teams.
All the examples cited in the interview seem carefully handpicked from a "Bible of Inferiority Complex", wherein he is in awe of anything non-Indian and almost ashamed of anything Indian. I'm sure another person can cite ten times more examples and say exactly the opposite (although that might sound equally unconvincing, but that’s another issue). The funniest thing, at the end, he finds hope for resolving the Indian PD situation in the Bhagwad Gita!! Well, if that was the answer, at least some of 1.1 billion people might have learnt something from thousands of years of reading and chanting.
Anyway, don’t take my word for it, judge for yourself... The only positive example quoted in the interview is the case of TVS Group, which insisted on selling diesel engines at normal mark-ups even during World War II when supply was disrupted and TVS had the import license. The author says TVS refused to "defect" whereas I think this was not a PD situation at all!! If there was any defection, TVS "defected" from industry and market norms by not letting the price being determined naturally by demand-supply factors and arbitrarily (benevolently?) pegged the prices. The author further claims, superficially, that other traders that had profited during the war "went out of business one after another" while TVS survived. How was the profiteering linked to them going out of business is not clear.
I have seen Chinese cab drivers stopping before a red light at 2:00 a.m. -- no Indian taxi driver would ever do that. The number of medals they win during the Olympics shows that they have systems that work very well.
Again, it is hard to imagine how stopping at red lights at 2 AM has got anything to do with winning Olympic medals. Is traffic behaviour a good indicator of number of medals? Oh, maybe the author means "discipline" and "adherence to formal systems". But hasn't anyone heard, "there's a method in madness"? The author's view of India seems to be that of a distant outsider that does not recognise the intricate informal systems that underlie the apparent chaos.
No wonder, in the end, the author admits that the book is an "expression of his frustrations" (read: don’t expect any logical arguments). Quite right, but I, for one, don’t share his frustrations (thank god!) and don’t find them very convincing. I think his arguments smell of cheap marketing gimmicks. Pity!
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