Games Indians Play

by V Raghunathan

  For questions such as these and other social dilemmas, there don’t seem to be answers that are right or wrong. Or so I had believed for a long time. I was enlightened when I found game theory capable of answering many questions such as these unambiguously. But what really captured my imagination was that most answers which a game-theoretic situation such as prisoner’s dilemma yielded were consistent with what Krishna had to say to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita! I discovered that modern game theory and associated experiments and games seem to validate what Krishna had placed before Arjuna in a nutshell. Clearly, it took thousands of years for management science to validate the Gita (even if unwittingly), much as present-day experiments on the outer reaches of space continue to validate Albert Einstein.

  Let me demonstrate how we may attempt to understand the Gita via game theory.

  Consider our simple prisoner’s dilemma situation of Chapter 4. For either of us on the horns of the prisoner’s dilemma, there is one path, namely cooperation, which if we both follow, leads to a total prison sentence of four years (two years each), while the other paths entail a total sentence of five years (none for the defector and five years for the cooperator when one of the two defects) or eight years (four years each when both defect).

  Hence, for the two accomplices, cooperation must be the correct course of action or the dharma, as it entails their larger good. If so, defection must be adharma (or betrayal of duty) as it collectively entails a greater sentence of five or eight years, against cooperation that entails only four years. In fact, the more the adharma in the society (both defecting amounting to ‘more’ adharma than only one of the two defecting), the more the collective suffering (eight years collectively versus five years).

  Krishna also says:

  Yoga-stha kuru karmani sangam tyaktvä dhananjya

  Sidhy-asidhyo samo bhutvä samatvam yoga ucyate

  Bhagavad Gita, Chapter II, Verse 48

  Meaning:

  Immersed in yoga, conduct action without attachment,

  O conqueror of wealth (Arjuna);

  Staying even-minded (objective or balanced) in success

  and failure; such equanimity is called yoga.

  This equanimity is called for in prisoner’s dilemma. If at the verge of doing the right thing, that is, taking the decision to cooperate, one keeps an eye on the possibility that the other may defect causing ‘loss’ to oneself, one is no longer committing oneself to action without attachment. One is no longer in a state of equanimity between success (C–C situation) and failure (C–D situation). If one is a true karmayogi, one just does the right thing, that is, cooperate, and moves on, irrespective of what the other might do.

  If you do that, continues Krishna:

  Tasmäd asaktah sätatam karyä karma samacara

  Asakto hy acaran karma param apnoti purusah

  Bhagavad Gita, Chapter III, Verse 19

  Meaning:

  Thus, being forever unattached, execute action that needs to be executed;

  Certainly working without any attachment, the righteous man achieves the highest good.

  If everyone followed the path of the karmayogi stipulated by the Gita, C–C is the only outcome and that leads to the ‘highest good’.

  Krishna’s advice on controlling desire is apt in the context of controlling the temptation that prisoner’s dilemma offers. Says Krishna, in repeated exhortations to Arjuna:

  Tasma tvam indriyany ädowu niyamya bharatarshabh

  Päpmanam prajahi hy enam jnana-vigyana-näsanam

  Bhagavad Gita, Chapter III, Verse 41

  Evam buddheh param buddhvä samstabhyatmänam ätmanä

  Jahi satrum mahä-bäho käma-rupam duräsadam

  Bhagavad Gita, Chapter III, Verse 43

  Yasya sarve samärambhäh käma-sankalpa-varjitä

  Jnanagni-dagdha-karmänam tam ähuh panditam budhäh

  Bhagavad Gita, Chapter IV, Verse 19

  Meaning:

  Thus, O the best of Bharatas (Arjuna), contain these senses (and)

  Shed away this desire which is the destroyer of wisdom and knowledge

  And knowing that Self is higher than the intellect and controlling yourself by the Self;

  O mightily armed one (Arjuna), crush your desire which is your unassailable enemy.

  One whose actions are free from desire and self-seeking purpose; and

  One whose actions are fired by wisdom—he is called wise by the learned.

  It is clear that, in prisoner’s dilemma, the root of the evil is the temptation that leads to the D–D decision. By controlling one’s desire or temptation, and taking that action which is fired by wisdom, we show ourselves to be wise and achieve the highest good.

  One can see here that at a deeper level, Krishna’s words concerning selflessness are not about renunciation of all that is good and enjoyable. Rather, it puts the means above the end and says that, if your means or actions are just and honourable, the end takes care of itself. This is true, as we have seen in prisoner’s dilemma. If end alone tempts you, and if end alone fires your desire, you are bound to commit actions that do not ensure the end you are striving to achieve. This too is true of prisoner’s dilemma!

  Metaphorically then, not to open your water taps fully while shaving is dharma; not to jump the red light on the traffic signal is dharma; and not to pollute the air we breathe is dharma. By the same token, in the context of the Veerappan Dilemma, writing the letter to the chief minister in accordance with the resolution we talked about is dharma. Similarly, cheating on the draw and writing the letter is adharma. Clearly, if everybody follows the path of dharma, water becomes abundant; the traffic flows smooth; the air becomes breathable; and the award winnable.

  That is why we must not ‘defect’; that is why those who do not follow the path of dharma ought to be punished; that is why it is one’s dharma to be provoked by the adharmi and retaliate, and yet show compassion and forgiveness in the conduct of one’s actions, just as the Tit for Tat strategy guides us.

  This is what game theory tells us, and this is what the Gita tells us as well. It is just that the Gita is a simplified and made-easy or ready-to-serve version of actions that the game theory plods through to demonstrate. It is interesting that some sage, aeons ago, thought of the right courses of action for humanity at large in a variety of situations that can stand the test of proof of present-day tools and techniques, including computer simulation.

  But I must hasten to add a word of caution here. I have shown how, as supported by game theory, it pays to follow the dharma, or the right conduct.

  But I am not well-versed in the Gita. Nor am I sure if I subscribe to all references to dharma, for instance, those pertaining to the caste system. I shall therefore desist from holding forth on this somewhat fascinating territory any further. My intention in writing this chapter was merely to share my own personal awakening to many aspects of the Gita. What is strange is that we should be witnessing so much of defect–defect behaviour in the very land that gave us the Gita. Clearly, while the West, using its cumbersome vehicle of game theory, has covered a lot of ground in collective cooperative behaviour, we seem to have made very little headway in that direction, notwithstanding our heritage of the Gita.

  Epilogue

  58 Summers after Independence

  If we can launch rockets but get nowhere,

  Fire missiles, but not our passions to excel,

  Build aircraft but cannot fly our dreams;

  If we can build oil rigs, cyclotrons and atomic plants,

  but not our character,

  Make heavy machinery and earth-moving equipment,

  Yet not move heaven and earth to improve our fate;

  If we can grow enough grain, but not care enough to store them,

  Allow half our population to go hungry, with malnutrition and ill-health still our national visage;

  If our population is well over a billion, and

  Still doubling every thirty-five years, what we innocentl
y call our leadership

  Turns family planning into a bad phrase;

  If 400 million and more are still strangers to basic

  essentials in life

  An equal number effectively illiterate, and

  A girl child still an object of rejection;

  If our water table is beginning to get lower than oil,

  Our rivulets and canals desiccated,

  Our seas, rivers and brooks saturated with refuse

  and effluents;

  If open sewage in our midst froths pink, blue and

  green,

  With such blatant chemical pollution a rule rather than

  exception, and

  Our reaction to these sights at best phlegmatic;

  If half our country still performs its morning ablutions

  under the open skies, and

  We are blissful being the world’s largest open-air

  lavatory, with

  Basic hygiene and human dignity nobody’s concern;

  If elephants and rhinos, leopards and tigers are fast

  disappearing,

  Our mountains turning naked and barren with

  denudation,

  Forests disappearing rapidly under the onslaught of

  deforestation;

  If cows, dogs, donkeys, horses, even camels can roam

  the busiest of streets,

  With us incapable of arriving at a collective solution to

  the problem, and

  In the name of compassion, subject the poor animals

  to the worst indignities;

  If our national monuments are in a state of abject neglect,

  Even a Taj Mahal stands upon a pile of a town’s refuse

  and indifference, with

  Tourism a mere caricature of its potential;

  If our public transport is perennially choking,

  Our hospital lobbies resemble railway platforms, and

  Our cities, towns and villages a vast compost heap;

  If our railway stations and drainage pipes are

  dwellings to zillions,

  Sidewalks, if there, unavailable to pedestrians, and

  Our traffic signals obeyed more in infraction than

  compliance;

  If our children are interviewed and waitlisted for

  nursery admission,

  A Class XII child with ninety per cent does not make it

  to the nearest college, and

  IITs, et al. brimming with 2,00,000 applications and

  more for a handful of seats;

  If we have to bribe a babu to pay our land taxes, and

  We can get a ‘RTO licence to kill’ without a

  driving test, with

  Corruption in a government department a rule,

  not exception;

  If our bureaucracy is not a service but power centre,

  and the system so corrupt that

  85 per cent leakage in intended fundings nationally

  acceptable, with

  Local administration in cities, towns and villages but a

  mere parody;

  If a weak rupee is our best ticket to exports,

  Quality, scale and punctuality at best secondary

  concerns, and

  Basic R&D still beyond the horizon;

  If it takes three to mow a lawn, and we still

  Erect buildings loading bricks on the heads

  of our women, with

  Our pace of change and productivity among the

  slowest and lowest in the world;

  If petitions are piled sky-high in every court

  of the land, with

  Justice nearly impossible to find in one’s lifetime

  (if then), and

  Our dehumanized jails overflowing even as crime rates continue to soar;

  If Shanghai alone surpasses Indian’s total exports three

  times over, and

  India’s total port capacity by about the same margin, and

  India’s total foreign direct investment over ten times;

  If, as a people, we have lost our sensitivity to the

  misery and mediocrity around us, and

  The only value system we can pass on to the next

  generation is that of

  Cynicism, opportunism, and corruption;

  If our standards of satisfaction and excellence lie lower

  than the soles of our feet, and

  We are not filled with a sense of shame

  At the gap between our rightful place in the world and

  the present one;

  Surely it’s time to introspect collectively?

  Are we, as believed by many, the worst self-bashers in the world? My answer to that would be, ‘We don’t bash ourselves hard enough.’ Not seriously, at any rate. If we did, we would also mend our actions collectively as a people. We would self-regulate ourselves a spot more. We would be less deceitful in our actions. We would be a tad more action-oriented. Our problem is we confuse words for actions. Words come easily to us. Action comes harder. We are long on petitions and affidavits, short on delivery of justice. Our leaders are long on promises and speeches, short on delivery; our teachers long on lectures, short on research; our press long on reports, short on investigations; our products long on advertisements, short on quality.

  We are ever ready to blame anyone but ourselves for our collective plight. For instance, we are always pointing fingers at the erratic traffic. Yet, I have never come across one who called himself a lousy driver. We drive with high beam, we honk endlessly, we jump red lights or ignore zebra crossings, we overtake from the left or speed across a one-way street— but we hardly see ourselves as defectors. This is not to say that every single Indian is a defector. There are those who are, by every reckoning, cooperators. But they are so few in number that they are unable to transport the country into a higher state of equilibrium. The number of defectors that typifies the country is so huge that it makes that minority of cooperators largely ineffective, or at any rate prevents the country from reaching its potential.

  Not long ago a CEO of a large software company came forward to donate 1000 luggage trollies to a certain airport. The airport manager not only rejected the offer, but also behaved rudely with the CEO. Why would a reasonable official rebuff such an offer? You cannot fathom the reason unless you think like a typical Indian babu. If the manager were to accept such an offer, how could he float his annual tenders, which assure him an annuity of income? Naturally, he rejected the offer. Whoever said you shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth obviously wasn’t an Indian!

  In another instance, a city pizza outlet franchisee of a national chain offered to place PVC garbage bins along the street where the outlet was located. His offer was refused as the municipal official thought having garbage bins would make litter on the street more conspicuous as people tend to throw the garbage around the bin rather than inside it. Having no bins, on the other hand, would diffuse the garbage over a larger area and hence make it less conspicuous!

  Once when I tried to organize an event with about 300 school children and an equal number of employees of the organization I was heading, to clean up a prominent public park, the local authorities were reluctant to allow the event since that implied a formal acknowledgement that the park was dirty! It took considerable people-skills and media management to make the event happen.

  In yet another instance, a colleague was sharing a public dais with a celebrated city police chief. Impressed by the latter’s apparent angst at the city’s traffic conditions, he offered to sponsor all traffic-discipline oriented hoardings in the city and left his card. When the cop did not call, my colleague tried to reach the officer but to no avail. Nor did the super-cop ever return the call, despite his office being repeatedly told about the purpose of the call.

  Our corruption is so unique that we must be the only country in the world where even giving away money can involve graft! Why else would we need to grease the palm of the off
icials in the land registration offices?

  The problem with citing these instances is that they tend to reinforce the inertia of the defectors with new-found justification for their defection. The usual reaction they elicit is, ‘See, I told you there is no profit in being a cooperator in a country full of despicable defectors.’ Each person aligns with the minority of cooperators, creating the illusion that the majority of defectors are some kind of aliens! We forget that it is the majority that typifies us and not the minority. We forget that the way we think is the way everyone thinks; that it is for us to be resolute with our cooperation. We forget that in this business of prisoner’s dilemma, there is no second guessing what the other might do; it is what one must do oneself, one’s own dharma—the absolute path of truth—that counts, and leads to the larger good of all.

  Let me end this book with an apology to Rabindranath Tagore as I rewrite his most inspiring poem, ‘Where the Mind Is without Fear’, as ‘Where the Neighbourhood Is without Filth’:

  Where the neighbourhood is without filth and the queues short and smooth;

  Where civil service is corruption-free;

  Where the towns have not been broken up into fragments by narrow potholed streets;

  Where justice is given out quickly from the profundity of the courts;

  Where a tireless work force stretches its arms towards perfection;

  Where the clear stream from the mountains has not lost its way into contaminated rivers of dead water;