Games Indians Play - V. Raghunathan

 V. Raghunathan is an academic who taught for twenty years at the IIM, A and hen worked in ING Vysya Bank as a top manager. He  is also the largest collector of locks or something to that effect. Anyway, he applies game theory to Indian situations and tries to understand why we are the way we are. I am not sure if he gave any solutions but certainly he shares many pointers where the better way might help. If anyone cares to listen.

The key thing is to understand the characteristics we Indians normally exhibit which come sup for consideration. These 12 characteristics are 

1) Low trustworthiness
2) Being privately smart and publicly dumb
3) Fatalist outlook
4) Being too intelligent for our own good
5) Abysmal sense of public hygiene
6) Lack of self-regulation and sense of fairness
7) Reluctance to penalise wrong conduct in others
8) Mistaking talk for action
9) Deep rooted corruption and a flair for free riding
10) Inability to follow or implement systems
11) A sense of self-worth that is massaged only we have the 'authority' to break rules
12) Propensity to look for loopholes in laws

A nice example that stays with us is what we do in traffic. At a signal we don't trust the others to follow rules so we break them first. When we get stuck in traffic due to our own stupidity like going wrong side - we actually think we are being 'smart' by saving fuel when we actually are pretty dumb in terms of the bigger danger and loss to us if we get into an accident. We have a fatalist outlook to authorities (especially when it suits us - and that means when we are not required to take any action). 

When we go wrong side or go through a red light, we think we are being too intelligent but as we know we are not. Public hygiene is low - accepted - and so are number of usable toilets. Lack of self-regulation and a sense of fairness do not fit in with us because we have this huge sense of entitlement (do you know who I am?). We will not penalise wrong conduct in others simply because it would mean taking a stand, dealing with some social work - we would rather suffer the consequences than do any extra bit for society's good. 

Totally know that we as a people mistake talk for action - and actually make no connection between talk and action - if a person says one thing and behaves exactly in the opposite way people are fine. Anything free is fine, and anything can be handled - accident by kid? get a driver to take the rap. murder by kid? buy and threaten witnesses.Most times the cops act on behalf of the perpetrators. Our whole idea is to find loopholes so we do not follow or implement systems.  

Enough said, we Indians are like Raghunathan says low on self-regulation and always looking to find ways to break or bend the rules and quick to defect - if one guy is breaking the law we quickly join him. I did not pay much attention to the examples he stated - Veerappan's dilemma, the prisoner's dilemma and so on - but got enough from them to understand that it does not take much to realise that if we follow a system we will all benefit. But we all want to benefit first, and perhaps at the cost of the others and in the process lose - but hey, that's fine by us.