[70s-80s overlander]

V. Raghunathan: 'Indians Are Privately Smart and Publicly Dumb'
Published: September 06, 2007 in India Knowledge@Wharton

In his book Games Indians Play: Why We Are the Way We Are, V. Raghunathan writes about a farmer whose corn won top awards year after year. When a reporter asked about the secret of his success, the farmer attributed it to the fact that he shared his corn with his neighbors. Why, the reporter wondered, would the farmer want to share his seed when those neighbors also competed with him for the prize? The farmer's reply was, "The wind picks up pollen from the ripening corn and swirls it from field to field. If my neighbors grew inferior corn, cross-pollination would steadily degrade the quality of my corn. If I am to grow good corn, I must help my neighbors do the same."

That Indians often fail to act like this farmer is the principal theme of Raghunathan's book. Using examples as varied as their tendency to drive through red lights to their failure to protect the environment, Raghunathan argues that Indians often act in ways that focus on winning immediate gains at the expense of long-term benefits. What makes Raghunathan's approach unusual is that his argument isn't a moral diatribe: He employs game theory -- a branch of mathematics -- and related concepts, such as the prisoner's dilemma, to present his case.

A former professor at the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad, Raghunathan in 2001 was named president of the ING Vysya Bank. He now works for the GMR Group as managing director of GMR Industries, the group's agri-business division, and CEO of the GMR Varalakshmi Foundation. Raghunathan also teaches game theory and behavioral economics at the University of Bocconi in Italy. To relax, he repairs mechanical clocks.
    
India Knowledge@Wharton: Your book is titled, Games Indians Play: Why We Are the Way We Are. What are Indians like?
[see full interview at http://knowledge.wha...articleid=4222#   ]

[dzibead]

"Raghunathan argues that Indians often act in ways that focus on winning immediate gains at the expense of long-term benefits.

He thinks this trait is peculiar to Indians?!?  Have I got news for him!

[crvlvr]

While the book includes many interesting anecdotes, he really does not offer any solutions to the "problem"

[dzibead]

The problem being human nature, I'm afraid.

[70s-80s overlander]

This not a mere matter of “human nature” – of behavior that is the same everywhere. The “solution” may well be via the author’s effort at making the reading Indian public aware of alternatives to current ways. Dr. V. Raghunathan is not saying that being “publicly dumb” is unique to Indians – but that his research suggests that it is a more common strategy among them. His academic focus is on predicting social behavior.

The author is not making “all or nothing” arguments, but he is suggesting that there is something very different about the PUBLIC behavior of many Indians and the PUBLIC behavior of many from, for example, Europe and the Americas. It would not surprise anyone in the US to see a normal everyday citizen pick up trash from the sidewalk and dispose of it properly. It would not surprise anyone in the US to hear a normal everyday citizen report that a public bathroom needs cleaning. Both actions might provoke significant surprise if they occurred in India. “Taking care” of public spaces is more likely to occur in one place than the other – even though both sets of citizens take good care of their own homes. Probably no one ever got trampled trying to get onto a train or bus in the US, but most of us know there indeed is some risk in boarding public transportation in certain Indian cities [and thus I would routinely take off my glasses, to protect them, before trying to get on a train or bus].

In the town where I live, each of us takes care of the sidewalk and the public grassy roadway easement in front of our home; most of us have planted trees, at our own expense, on this public property. If a neighbor is ill or frail or out of town, either I or another neighbor will see that the grass is cut and this public area is kept neat. Legally we are under no obligation whatsoever to help keep the town looking beautiful – yet we do. One could argue that “publicly we are smart” – as caring care of the public areas does end up helping each of us individually. Imagine how differently India would appear if each citizen “took care” of the public area near his or her abode or place of business.

Dr. V. Raghunathan argues that Indian citizens are far more likely than the citizens of many other countries to chose short-run gain even though it costs them more in the long-run. In the book, however, he does give examples of Indians who grasped the importance of keeping the future in mind. He also points out there is no reason whatsoever why more concern about “the public good” would not be compatible with core Indian traditions.

[dzibead]

This is a good explanation of Raghunathan's thesis, overlander, and I see why you say he's not just talking about universal human behavior.  Unfortunately, I see lots of instances of the same lack of concern about public spaces and the general welfare where I live ... and ironically, I live in supposedly enlightened Northern California.  But the degree to which people take responsibility for public "caretaking" seems to vary dramatically from neighborhood to neighborhood and community to community where I live, and the behavior in a lot of our less affluent areas is identical to what he's talking about in India.  I'm not sure why that's the case, since a person doesn't have to be financially well off to pick up the trash in public spaces, but maybe people in less affluent areas just don't have a sense of having a "stake" in their own communities.  

However, the focus on immediate personal benefits at the expense of long-term  community/social benefits, and the failure to recognize that providing social benefits can also have a personal "payoff", often manifests itself in a different way in our more affluent areas -- example: when people invoke concern about maintaining their "property values" as a rationale for not providing affordable housing for lower income people, and consequently end up pricing teachers and cops and firemen and people like that out of the market so they can't live in the communities where they provide their services, which ends up impoverishing the community in a different way.   I've seen this attitude manifested in other behavior where I live as well: e.g., when people who don't have kids or whose kids are in private schools fail to support school bond measures because they think they won't derive any personal benefit, without reflecting on how bad it will be for society (including, ultimately themselves) when the education of 90% of the kids in the county goes down the toilet because of inadequate funding, or, e.g., when a bond measure for public libraries is voted down because people in the richest towns in the county voted against it -- because why do they care about public libraries, they can affort to buy whatever books they want?

Whether you're talking about failing to pick up trash in a public space or failing to take care the broader welfare of the whole community you live in, what this boils down to is an attitude of "I've got mine and to hell with the rest of you," and India certainly isn't the only place this attitude is prevalent even though the way it's manifested there may be different from the way it's manifested in North America or Western Europe.