Book Review: Games Indians Play

Games Indians Play: Why we are the way we are’

By V. Raghunathan

(Forward by N.R. Narayana Murthy)

Penguin Portfolio

Dr. V. Raghunathan is a man of many credits. He has been a professor of finance at IIM Ahmedabad from 1982-2001; then worked as President of ING Vysya Bank and later as MD of GMR Industries. He is author of 9 books, has been on many companies’ boards, and esteemed panels. He is also a popular columnist in newspapers; and is involved in CSR roles as of now. You can check his LinkedIn profile here; or can go to his website. When such a man writes something, readers have better take him seriously. 

The purpose of this book is to analyze and understand why Indians are ‘like this only’. Now what is meant by ‘like this’ has often negative connotations. Dr. Raghunathan says that the root cause is that Indians are one of the most intelligent lots in this world. He says he has visited many places and understood many people – but never has he found such an intelligent population, as we are in India. Yet, he says our intelligence results in us taking rational decisions ‘individually’ in situations, but leading to our ‘collective’ failure. He calls us “Privately smart and publicly dumb”: 

When I jump a queue or a red light, or throw that garbage on the sidewalk, I am taking a rational ‘squeal’ decision, since it seems to get me ahead of others or make life easier for me. Here I am privately smart. But then, as others are no less rational, intelligent and smart, they too start squealing for the same reasons, and before we know it, we have unruly traffic, filthy streets and stinking urinals. So collectively we are all worse off. And then we complain about a dirty country, a polluted city and appalling traffic. In short, publicly we emerge dumb. (P 42)

To show how whatever is in our achievement kitty fails to match up to the best in the world, glance this portion: 

Impressive as the completion of the Konkan Railway or the Delhi Metro Railway have been, they pale in comparison to the Chinese projects, especially where implementation skills and political will are concerned. Consider the statistics. It took seven to ten years to complete the 760 km Konkan Railway. As for the Delhi Metro, between 1950 and 1990, some thirty feasibility studies were carried out by various bodies to evaluate an alternatice transportation system for Delhi. The final go-ahead came in 1990. Delhi Metro Rail Corp Ltd was established in 1995 and first phase of eleven kms was completed in 2004. The eighteen km Calcutta Metro took a good 24 years to complete, from 1971 to 1995. 

China completed the final section of the pan-Himalaya Golmud-Lhasa railway - 1956 kms – at 5072 meters above the sea level. It had 550 km frozen belt, with snow alternately melting and freezing in summer and winter. Workers had to breathe bottled oxygen to cope up with high altitude (no single death due to this though). This stretch of 1142 kms was completed in a mere 4 years. (P13-14)

The best part of the book is the analysis. Dr. Raghunathan uses Game Theory and Behavioral Economics to analyze the situation. Though in the process, he ignores many factors. For example, he discarded the impact of colonization (by foreigners, for a thousand years) on our present behavior, in a one line sentence. Here, I didn’t agree with him. But seeing that history is not his area, and the tools taken up by him for analysis are powerful enough, I didn’t bother much. He explains the Prisoner’s Dilemma in the beginning and by the end he tries to reach a conclusion. Now I found that the Game Theory part could be applied to any case, not only to Indians or India. He worries that in a Prisoner’s dilemma situation, if everyone tries to take best rational decision benefitting oneself, in the end it harms all. So what was the way out? Now this was the most important part. I have typewritten a portion from his last chapters, though this is selective and not exhaustive enough: 

Karmany evadhikaras te ma phalesu kadacana

Ma karma-phala-hetur bur ma te sango‘stv akarmani

(Bhagawat Gita, Chapter II, Verse 47)

Meaning: You have right only to the action and never to the fruit of the action. Fruit of action should not be your motivation, nor should you be driven by attachment to action.

For most of my youth and a little beyond, I always found these words innocuous and naïve. Taking this bit of verse as a random sample of what the Gita is all about, I thought I understood why we weren’t result-driven people. You see, innocence can lead to such quick generalizations.

Meanwhile, a good Samaritan presented me a copy of the Gita, which I did read now and then, though rarely pausing to contemplate seriously on its contents. 

It was only when I started getting interested in game theory and immersed myself in it that the whole import of the Gita hit me like a truck.

In many ways, the Gita, in a quintessential form, lays down what one may call the absolute truth for most aspects of our lives, the dharma. To amplify this statement further: for years, my idea of right and wrong was largely intuitive. Yet somewhere deep down, I could never see any reasonable evidence to believe that there existed absolute truths outside physical sciences which one could ‘measure and prove’.

My argument was: If this is a world of ‘selfish genes’ and therefore selfish people, what makes it ‘wrong’ to shaft somebody, as long as you found it worth your while? Religions may proscribe shafting somebody, pronouncing such action as a sin. But the question is: ‘Why is it a sin?’ Who is to say that a wrong has happened, given that each individual is selfish and each one’s actions are supposed to be in the best interests of oneself? Similarly, the Gita might say that it is wrong to be driven by desires. But why is it wrong? Again, if I see a child begging for alms and risk reinforcing the system, or desist and risk the child going hungry? Which is the lesser evil?

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-theoric situation such as prisoner’s dilemma yielded were consistent with what Krishna had to say to Arjuna in the Bhagawat 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 of management science to validate the Gita (even if unwittingly), much as presend day experiments on the outer reaches of space continue to validate Albert Einstein. 

Consider our simple prisoner’s dilemma situation of Chapter 4. ……. 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”….. 

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 Gita is 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 a large in a variety of situations that can stand the test of proof of present-day tools and techniques, including computer simulations. 

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 behavior 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 behavior, we seem to have made very little headway in that direction, notwithstanding our heritage of the Gita.

(P142-148)

This review won’t be complete if you missed the last two paragraphs in the above quoted text. And any review can’t be replacement for the ultimate joy of reading a book. 

The book is not long, the language used is simple, the scientific inquiry (e.g. game theory) is not too complex to understand, and this book deserves to be read by one and all. I highly recommend it to all my readers. 

- Rahul

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Book Review: The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai

“The Inheritance of Loss”

By Kiran Desai

Penguin Books

‘The Inheritance of Loss’ is Kiran Desai’s second novel, which had won her ‘Man Booker Prize, 2006’. 

The story is set in a small North East Indian town at the border of Nepal. The characters are a retired judge Jemubhai Patel, his dog Mutt, his cook (and the cook’s son Biju) his orphaned granddaughter, Sai and her maths tutor Gyan. The story flips through the present and then goes back in time when Jemubhai recollects memories from his days spend in England as a young Gujarati man out of a small town. The storyline in the present touches Sai’s love/crush with Gyan. Later on Gyan gets lost in a political movement to get separate country called Gorkhaland for people from Nepali origins. (the novel presents an interesting and learned background to the separatist Gorkhaland movement; also on how the movement had digressed into lootings and robbery). A parallel storyline runs through Baiju’s life (the cook’s son) who had gone to the US to earn some money, but when he returns, he is looted in a tragic manner and left with nothing but in a woman’s attire. 

I think the judge’s character has been developed most. To me he had grown into a loathsome individual, harassing his wife when young, and then exploiting his cook, but at the same time he would do anything in love for his dog Mutt. Biju’s character, though not developed much, shows a stark reality of pitiful trap of poverty. This “political sense” in my opinion/insight is a unique and amazing side of this book and the author. 

Many of the characters in the book appear “helpless” and “weak”, but when we think about the circumstances and political and social environment, the context is saddening. The story is also a pointer of how poverty, extremist movements, political apathy, all these miseries trap our world. 

The literary style of Kiran Desai is unique. Especially in the beginning I was amazed at the minuteness of details that she commented on. Even a body movement was captured in her humorous style. But at times the minute level descriptions became too much for me. What I really loved was the political sense. The story line traversed touching shades of migration, multi-culturist society, separatist movements and terrorism, class differences, poverty, human sensibilities and what not.. Overall, it was an enlightening read and I recommend it to all. 

Some random excerpts from the novel, said by different characters in different situations, type written by me:

Mrs. Sen, “More Muslims in India than in Pakistan. They prefer to multiply here. You know, that Jinnah, he ate bacon and eggs for breakfast every morning and drank whiskey every evening. What sort of Muslim nation they have? And five times a day bums up to God. Mind you, with that Koran, who can be surprised? They have no option but to be two-faced. The reasoning formed a central pillar of Hindu belief and it went like this: so strict was the Koran that its teachings were beyond human capacity. Therefore, Muslims were forced to pretend one thing, do another; they drank, smoked, ate pork, visited prostitutes, and then denied it. Unlike Hindus, who needn’t deny…. Muslims also came from somewhere else, Babar and all… And stayed here to breed. Not that it is the fault of the women – poor things – it is the men – marrying three, four wives – no shame. They have nothing better to do, you know. Without TV and electricity, there will always be this problem-”. (P130)

“Rule of nature: Imagine if we were sitting around saying, “So-and-so-score years ago, Neanderthals came out of the woods, attacked my family with a big dinosaur bone, and now you give back.” (P134)

“Half awed I was by the writing, but half I was bewildered by these Christian ideas of confession and forgiveness – they place the burden of the crime on the victim! If nothing can undo the misdeed, then why should sin be undone? The whole system seemed to favor, in fact, the criminal over the righteous. You could behave badly, say you were sorry, you would get extra fun and be reinstated in the same position as the one who had done nothing, who now had both to suffer the crime and the difficulty of forgiving, with no goodies in addition at all. And of course you would feel freer than ever to sin if you were aware of such a safety net; sorry, sorry, of so so sorry.” (P200)

“Immigration, so often presented as a heroic act, could just as easily be the opposite; that it was cowardice that led many to America; fear marked the journey, not bravery; a cockroachy desire to scuttle to where you never saw poverty, not really, never had to suffer a tug to your conscience; where you never heard the demands of servants, beggars, bankrupt relatives, and where your generosity would never be openly claimed; where by merely looking after your own wife-child-dog-yard you could feel virtuous. Experience the relief of being an unknown transplant to the locals and hide the perspective granted by journey.” (P299)

- Rahul

Book Review: Beginnings of Learning

'Beginnings of Learning'

By J. Krishnamurti

Phoenix paperback 

This is Krishnamurti’s second book which I finished reading now. And what a wonderful book this is. Krishnamurti was an outstanding philosopher and thinker. He founded many schools in India, the USA and Brockwood Park in Hampshire, UK. This book documents his conversations with some of the students, teachers and parents at these schools (major one is Brockwood Park). The conversations ranged from anything to everything. The goal is to find how to help students/children meet the educational demands of the society without conforming to society’s conventional values. The focus should be on self-awareness, self-learning, avoiding prejudices, learning difference between affection and sentiment, being peaceful and non-violent in true sense, not conforming to other’s values, and acquiring spirit of cooperation.  

The book is in the form of conversations. A student or questioner asks something and then Krishnamurti replies, explains and takes the questioners along with him. The QnAs are very valid for even today’s times; perhaps more valid today to the wider audience.  

Here I have typewritten and reproduced some interesting paragraphs from the same book:  

“Have you thought about violence? What is involved in violence, how does it arise, what is the structure of violence? There is physical violence and there is the violence of obedience – are you obeying and therefore being violent? Do you understand what I mean? Where I obey you and suppress what I think, that suppression will burst out one day. So there is physical violence and violence brought about through obedience, the violence of competitiveness, of conformity. When I confirm to a patter I am violent – you see the connection? When I live a life of fragmentation – that is, when I think one thing and say another, do another – that is fragmentation and that also breeds violence. I may be very quiet, gentle, do all the work I am asked to do, but I flare up: which indicates there has been suppression in me. So violence is not just physical violence, it is a very complex question. And if you haven’t thought about it, when you are faced with violence you will react most unintelligently.” (P191-192) 

“A young man with a sensitive face and hands said, “I am one of those who take drugs. I have taken them regularly for hour or five years; not much; probably every month or so. I am well aware what it is doing to me. I am not quite as sharp as I was. When I am high I think I can do anything. I seem to have tremendous energy and there is no confusion. I see things sharply. I feel like a god on earth, perfect, without any problems, without any regrets. But I can’t maintain that state all the time and I am back on this mad earth. Now I need a stronger dose and where it is leading me I really don’t know. I am uneasy about it now. I can see myself gradually ending up in a mental hospital, and yet the pull of the other state is so strong that I seem to have no resistance. I experienced with it in the beginning because the others did. It was fun in the then, but now it has become a danger. You see how clearly I can explain all this? But yet there is part of me that has become slow, lethargic and ineffectual.” (P244) 

“The idealist who is also a revolutionary, though he may talk convincingly about freedom, inevitably will bring about a dictatorship of the few or of the many. He will also create a personal cult and destroy totally every form of freedom. You may have observed this in the French and Russian revolutions. Your ideal which may come out of the ashes of the present structure will only be speculative Utopia – call it what you like – you want to build a new society. This is what all the physical revolutionaries have done. They start off with equality, social justice, the withering of the state and so on, and end up with tyrannical bureaucracy, insistence on conformity and the exercise of authority in the name of the state. Surely this is not what you want.” (P247) 

“Knowing that you may be hurt, how ill you prevent this hurt taking place? If somebody tells you that you are not clever or beautiful, you get hurt, or angry, which is another form of resistance. Now what can you do? You saw very clearly how the past hurts go away without any effort; you saw because you listened and gave your attention. Now when someone says something unpleasant to you, be attentive; listen very carefully. Attention will prevent the mark of hurt.” (P256)  

It was an interesting and exhaustive read. I recommend this book for all who are interested in learning.  

- Rahul 

Book review: Conversations with God

‘Conversations with God: Book one, an uncommon dialogue’

By Neale Donald Walsch

Hodder and Stoughton 

The title of this book had fascinated me for long and when I could get this book in my hands, I was elated. Reading the introduction made my hunger a million times large. After all, the author claims that he has never written this book, but this book “happened to him.” One fine day, God started to talk to the author. The author was a failure on many fronts before writing the book and he also had many dilemmas and disillusions. God started talking to him – God’s conversation started coming in his mind and his hands wrote everything down. The author had the opportunity to ask as many questions as he wished and he made use of this opportunity very much. The product is in the form of this book and some more books in the series. The author claims that it was God who planned these books, and God was merely using the author as a medium. 

To begin with, I bet the author has read or heard about Hinduism or Vedanta. I say this because the concept of God as he describes in this book, or better, the concept of God which God reveals through this book, is present only in Hinduism in general and Vedanta in particular. The central point in this book is that each one of us is God waiting to be realised. “Aham Brahmasmi”, as the holy Hindu scriptures tell. All of us are the same God, no one is superior no one is inferior. And then God through his book also tells that reincarnation is truth – thereby accepting one basic belief of Hinduism and its sister religions/sects. There is hardly any conflict between what God tells through this book and what Hinduism and Vedanta told us a long time back. The author is reformist when it comes to Christianity. He attacks the Church, calls propaganda a propaganda; but he then very politically accepts some basic beliefs of the religion. The author doesn’t name many religions in this book and claims all that is in this book came from God and these are not a product of his mind or any insanity. If he is true, then this book can become yet another proof that Hinduism and Vedanta perhaps touch the truth in a way no other religion or sect has ever done.

Excerpts from the book: ‘Conversations with God: Book one, an uncommon dialogue’ by Neale Donald Walsch.  

—  

Page 67: 

Most of the New Testament writers never met or saw Jesus in their lives. They lived many years after Jesus left the earth. They wouldn’t have known Jesus of Nazareth if they walked into him on the street. 

The Bible writers were great believers and great historians. They took the stories which had been passed down to them and to their friends by others – elders – from elder to elder, until finally a written record was made. 

And not everything of the Bible authors was included in the final document. 

Already “churches” had sprung up around the teachings of Jesus – and , as perhaps whenever and wherever people gather in groups around a  powerful idea, there were certain individuals within these churches, or enclaves, who determined what parts of the Jesus story were going to be told – and how. This process of selecting and editing continued throughout the gathering, writing, and publishing of the gospels, and the Bible. 

Even several centuries after the original scriptures were committed to writing, a High Council of the Church determined yet one more time which doctrines and truths were to be included in the then-official Bible – and which would be “unhealthy” or “premature” to reveal to the masses. 

—  

Page 137 

You are making mock of Me. You are saying that I, God, made inherently imperfect beings, then have demanded of them to be perfect, or face damnation. 

You are saying then that, somewhere several thousand years into the world’s experience, I relented, saying that from then on you didn’t necessarily have to be good, you simply had to feel bad when you were not being good, and accept as your saviour the One Being who could always be perfect, thus satisfying Mu Hunger for perfection. You are saying that My Son – who you call the One Perfect One – has saved you from your own imperfection – the imperfection I gave you. 

In other words’ God’s Son has saved you from what His Father did. 

This is how you – many of you – say I have set it up.  

Now who is mocking whom? 

—  

Page 161 

You carry a thought around that money is bad. You also carry a thought around that God is good. Bless you! Therefore, in your thought system, God and money do not mix. 

This makes things interesting, because this then makes it difficult for you to take money for any good thing. 

—  

Page 191 

If you ever lit a cigarette in your life – much less smoked a pack a day for 20 years as you have – you have very little will to live. You don’t care what you do to your body. 

And if you have every taken alcohol into your body, you have very little will to live. The body was not meant to intake alcohol. It impairs the mind. 

Author: But Jesus took alcohol! He went to the wedding and turned water into wine! 

God: So who said Jesus was perfect? 

I will stick to my original statement: the body was not meant to intake alcohol. 

Author: But even some medicines contain alcohol! 

God: I have no control over what you call medicine. I will stay with my statement. 

—  

Page 194 

I designed your magnificent body to last forever! And the earliest of you did live in the body virtually pain free, and without fear of what you now call death. 

In your religious mythology, you symbolise your cellular memory of these first humans by calling them Adam and Even. Actually, of course, there were more than two. 

At the outset, the idea was for you wonderful souls to have a chance to know your Selves as Who You Really Are through experiences gained in the physical body, in the relative world – as I have explained. 

This was done through the slowing down of the unfathomable speed of all vibration (thought form) to produce matter – including that matter you call the physical body. 

Life evolved through a series of steps in the blink of an eye that you now call billions of years. And in this holy instant came you, out of the sea, the water of life, onto the land and into the form you now hold. 

—  

Page 197 

Your body, your mind, and your soul (spirit) are one. In this, you are a microcosm of Me - the Divine All, the Holy Everything, the Sum and Substance. You see now how I am the beginning and the end of everything, the Alpha and the Omega. 

Now I will explain to you the ultimate mystery: your exact and true relationship to Me. 

YOU ARE MY BODY. 

As your body is to your mind and soul, so too, are you to My mind and soul. Therefore: Everything I experience, I experience through you. 

Just as your body, mind, and spirit are one, so too, are Mine. 

—  

Page 204 

Author: Is there such a thing as reincarnation? How many past lives have I had? 

God: It is difficult too believe there is still a question about this. I find it hard to imagine. There have been so many reports from thoroughly reliable sources of past life experiences. Some of these people have brought back strikingly detailed descriptions of events, and such completely verifiable data to eliminate any possibility that they were making it up or had contrived to somehow deceive researchers and loved ones. 

You have had 647 past lives, since you insist on being exact. This is your 648^th.  

—  

- Rahul

Book Review: Trade like Warren Buffett

‘Trade Like Warren Buffett’

By James Altucher

Wiley

Warren Buffett is considered world’s greatest value investor. Though he is famous for “buy and hold forever” strategy, the author James Altucher says perhaps no other investor has applied so many diverse set of investment strategies, as Buffett has done. This book is a testimony to that. (Warren Buffett claims to be 15% Philip Fisher and 85% Benjamin Graham.)

In this book, James tries to cover all the important different investment styles used by Buffett, e.g. merger arbitrage, relative value arbitrage, bonds, fixed income arbitrage, stocks, commodities, and currencies, and focuses on how we can learn some trading tips from him. The pages explain strategies like mean reversion, market timing, funds, as well as Graham Dodd (margin of safety). The important role of internet and technologies in investing is also well explained.

The book also contains very interesting interviews with two Buffett style hedge fund investors. I also liked the chapters “Buffett and disasters”, “trade like Bill Gates”, and “Jealousy”. This is a very good book, though the beginners may find it slightly difficult at some places. Highly recommended for Warren Buffett fans.

- Rahul

Book Review: Tao Te Ching

‘Tao Te Ching’
By Lao-tzu
Translated by Stephen Mitchell
Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc.

This is a wonderful book for which I am grateful to our library. The introduction to the book says this is a book which is translated maximum number of times after Christian bible and only a few other books. It contains a philosophy which is foundation for Taoism religion and has influenced a lot others.

Lao-tzu is said to have lived around 6th century BC, though everything about him is debated and unauthenticated. It is said that he served in some small nation in China and after its downfall he left the state. Before he was leaving, the security personnel at the border asked him to leave his thinking in form of a book, and hence the great philosopher wrote it in the form of this book. Though it is still debated if he himself was the original thinker and author of the philosophy in the pages.

Tao means “way”, and the title of the book is “Tao Te Ching”, meaning “Book of the way”.

It was a delight to go through this book. At many places, I found the philosophy to be similar or same to that of Hinduism, Sanatan Dharma or the Vedanta. This was not surprising, because if there is one truth, no matter who tries to get it and in what geography, one should make the same conclusions and observations. Many times I wondered if Lao-tzu had read the Vedas or if he got the concept of nirguna brahma from there. I am reproducing some texts from this book, with regret if there are any errors.

I also thank the translator Stephen Mitchell for making this book understandable for us.

—

The Tao is infinite, eternal
Why is it eternal?
It was never born;
Thus it can never die.
Why is it infinite?
It has no desires for itself;
Thus it is present for all beings.

—

Fill your bowl to the brim
And it will spill
Keep sharpening your knife
And it will blunt
Chase after money and security
And your heart will never unclench
Care about people’s approval
And you will be their prisoner.

—

Do your work, then step back
The only path to serenity.

—

We join spokes together in a wheel,
But it is the center hole
That makes the wagon move
We shape clay into a pot,
But it is the emptiness inside
That holds whatever we want.
We hammer wood for a house,
But it is the inner space
That makes it livable
We work with being
but non-being is what we use

–

Success is as dangerous as failure.
Hope is as hollow as fear.
What does it mean that success is as dangerous as failure
Whether you go up the ladder or down it,
Your position is shaky.
When you stand with your two feet on the ground,
You will always keep your balance.
What does it mean that hope is as hollow as fear?
Hope and fear are both phantoms
That arise from thinking of the self.
When we don’t see the self as self,
What do we have to fear?
See the world as your self.
Have faith in the way things are.
Love the world as your self;
Then you can care for all things.

–

The Master doesn’t talk, he acts.
When his work is done,
The people say, “Amazing!:
We did it, all by ourselves!”

–

Throw away holiness and wisdom,
And people will be a hundred times happier.
Throw away morality and justice,
And people will do the right thing.
Throw away industry and profits,
And there won’t be any thieves.
If these three aren’t enough,
Just stay at the center of the circle
And let all things take their course.

–

The Tao is ungraspable.
How can her mind be at one with it?
Because she doesn’t cling to ideas.
Since before time and space where,
The Tao is.
It is beyond is and is not.
How do I know this is true?
I look inside myself and see.

–

There was something formless and perfect
Before the universe was born.
It is serene. Empty.
Solitary. Unchanging.
Infinite. Eternally present.
It is the mother of the universe.
For lack of a better name,
I call it the Tao.
Man follows the earth.
Earth follows the universe.
The universe follows the Tao.
The Tao follows only itself.

–

All things end in the Tao
As rivers flow into the sea.

–

The Tao never does anything,
Yet through it all things are done.

–

When there is no desire,
All things are at peace.

–

Teaching without words,
Performing without actions:
That is the Master’s way.

–

Knowing others is intelligence;
Knowing yourself is true wisdom.
Mastering others is strength;
Mastering yourself is true power.

–

Men are born soft and supple;
Dead they are stiff and hard.
Plants are born tender and plaint;
Dead, they are brittle and dry.

You can also get a few quick Wiki links related to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taoism ; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tao_Te_Ching ; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tao ; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laozi

- Rahul

Book Review: The Rules of Wealth

‘The Rules of Wealth: A personal code for prosperity’
First Impression, 2007
By: Richard Templar
Pearson Power

What interested me into this book first and foremost was its title. “Rules of wealth”: interesting enough. And I enjoyed reading it and got experienced perspective too. Richard Templar is the bestseller-author of “The Rules of Life”, and a very successful man himself, hence an authority to write on this topic.

The book lists 100 rules which we can apply to gain, enjoy and sustain wealth in the best manner possible. It is divided into five parts: 1. thinking wealthy, 2. getting wealthy, 3. get even wealthier, 4. staying wealthy and 5. sharing your wealth. It was the first part which I enjoyed most. Thinking wealthy is the first point to start becoming wealthy anyway.

I found the author to have the right balance and mix of optimism with caution. At places he is conservative, and rightly so, and at other places he is bold and not risk averse. There are rules which make us keep humane and family causes above pure financial greed, and there are others which ask to give up short-term gains for the long term wins, and the vice versa. The key, as the author rightly says, is to apply the strategy and take actions rather than keep thinking or procrastinating.

Though there were places where I found the rules to be against the present or future business models and too conservative also, I think prudent readers would separate the chaff from the seeds. Recommended.

- Rahul

Book Review: Deming Goldratt

‘Deming and Goldratt: The Theory of Constraints and the System of Profound Knowledge: The Decalogue’
First Indian Edition 2007
By Domenico Lepore and Oded Cohen
Productivity and Quality Publishing Pvt Ltd

Edward Deming is considered father of modern quality management. Eliyahu Godratt is a business management guru and his theory of constraints (TOC) has changed the way we looked at problems and improvements. In this book, the authors Lepore and Cohen have tried to integrate the contributions of these two great men. The System of Profound Knowledge by Deming and TOC by Goldratt has been assimilated and the product is a comprehensive system and a conceptual framework.

The approach put forward in this book is as follows:

The Decalogue:

Step 1: Establish the goal of the system, the UOM and the operating measurement
Step 2: Understand the system
Step 3: Making the system stable
Step 4: Identify the constraint and carry out five focusing steps
Step 5: Implement the buffer management
Step 6: Reduce the variability of the constraints and the main processes
Step 7: Creating a suitable management structure
Step 8: Eliminate the external constraint: selling the excess capacity
Step 9: Bringing the constraint inside the organization when possible
Step 10: Set up a continuous learning program

The goal of the book is “to provide a path to follow in order to deal with the constraint that prevents us from achieving continuous improvement in our organizations.”

- Rahul