Last week a friend of mine had come from hyderabad. So, took him to forum…and by default I went to landmark also. This is the place where I will never get bored……I can spend hours together in landmark looking at all the books. Finally bought two books and one of them was this one Games Indians Play by V. Raghunathan.
Coming to this book, I had heard about this book already but didn’t knew what it was all about. So, when I found it in landmark, I just saw the contents and it seemed to be really interesting. This book is basically about “why we are the way we are” i.e., why are we Indians the way we are….an interesting read isn’t it??? 🙂 I came across many new concepts of game theory through this book and the way the author correlates them to the way Indians think and behave is quite interesting. Especially the prisoner’s dilemma framework was really good. Also the different variations of this and then trying to understand the characteristics of human rationality, irrationality, egotism, competetion, co-operation among we Indians, etc through this framework was really good. Also the author discusses about the various scenarios that he had used when he was teaching at IIM-A and a few experiments that he used to do in parties, etc.
On the whole its an interesting read and would definitely recommend it. If you don’t have the time to read the book atleast try reading about the concept of prisoner’s dilemma, pseudo dilemma, wolf’s dilemma, etc. They are really really interesting concepts worth looking at. Also original articles on prisoner’s dilemma by hofstadter that were published in scientific american in 1980’s are worth reading.
Of all the quotes that I came across in this book, the one I liked the most is this
“India is a functioning anarchy” —by J.K.Galbraith (US ambassador to India, 1962).