Tree in Black- Sourav Biswas
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Book Review
Title: The Corruption Conundrum and Other Paradoxes and Dilemmas
Author: V. Raghunathan
Published in 2010 by Penguin Portfolio.
Probability Is The Only Certainty
This little book might seem at first to be an elaborate paean to cynicism, but it is nothing of the sort, even if it refuses to flinch from stating home truths. It does explore why corruption is universally rampant asserting: “a society is as corrupt as the system allows it to be,” but the author advocates remedies, not celebration.
Mr. V. Raghunathan, writer of this brilliant addition to management theory, taught Finance at IIM Ahmedabad for nearly two decades. He then went on to ING Vyasa Bank as its President before becoming the CEO of GMR Varalakshmi Foundation.
Here, he plays a continuous series of mind games via examples of logic with its knickers in a twist. But he starts off with the positive and commonsensical assertion that success is probable if the odds are meticulously pre-planned and materially stacked in one’s favour.
Raghunathan believes weighing and measuring componentry to arrive at probability, for or against a desired outcome, is the only certainty. It is, in plainspeak, an as-you-sow-so-shall-you-reap credo, very close to the age-old Hindu belief in Karma and its phenomena in tandem, namely cause and effect- applied to business, management, governance and decision-making.
Raghunathan, erudite, affable, conceptually lucid, is something of a Renaissance man, with six management books to his credit, additional skills as a cartoonist for a national daily and a columnist for the pink papers. He also played chess at the all-India level. He likes old locks and has gathered an impressive collection of the contraptions to himself.
His intellectual references, for the purposes of this book and its deductive and inductive logic explorations, are to do with the ancient Greek philosophers and other Western science moderns such as Albert Einstein who’s famous remark about certainty: God does not play dice, Raghunathan, to his credit, contests.
The author emphasises that: “God not only plays dice but His other name is random variability. If we do the right things, God’s way of rewarding us is to increase the probability of success.” Accordingly, Raghunathan does not talk of faith, except for fleeting references to the Bhagvad Gita, again to affirm the value of right action. There is no acknowledgement of predestination or embedded tendencies deep in our DNA programmed to ensure future outcomes or towards his assessment of probability.
The writer tries not to take sides in the moral equation. He is silent on Graham Greene’s belief that it is important to choose a side in order to remain human. But Greene, the master of moral dilemmas and cold betrayal depicted in novel after novel never confuses humanity with ethics. In fact, one may well remark at the quality of Greene’s vision of humanity which seems to consist of failings and wonder at its moral price!
Raghunathan on his part also makes clear that paradoxes, dilemmas and conundrums have no easy intellectual certainties, no obvious right answer or solution to them. What they present are either/or choices and sometimes, multiple-options based on the available facts.
Time and again, the author points to the inductive choices, also known, ironically, as leaps of faith. He rearranges the same set of numbers or gets the protagonists to cast the dice over and over, as in voting. And we see very different implications present themselves with each alteration. Raghunathan jokes, finally, about the best democractic decision being dictatorial.
To navigate safely through such binary or multipolar matters, mankind has traditionally turned to belief in a higher power for guidance and inspiration. Divorced from this ethical lodestar, it is quite easy to treat expediency as the greatest good, and wisdom as no more than comment on the durability of such expedient means.
Besides, these three cousins-paradox, dilemma and conundrum, tend to thrive in chaos. Applied to the stock market, Raghunathan points out that, “the opportunities to earn disproportionate returns are negligible in an efficient market”.
The author, a mathematician, is captivated by Game Theory, made famous by the acclaimed film A Beautiful Mind on the life of John Nash, its inventor. Game Theory states one reaches “equilibrium” on the very first move, meaning, the first move made well, as in the proverb “Well begun is half done”. But, Nash goes at uncovering such axiomatic truths mathematically, as does Raghunathan.
He describes the power of compounding, an open secret of the successful corporation, bank or wealthy individual. But the writer shows how the concept tends to elude the grasp of ordinary people, because of what he calls “counter-intuitive” thinking.
Finally, why did Raghunathan write this instructive, cerebral book: “To me, paradoxes are important in their own right. Paradoxes improve our logical thinking as well as intuition,” he says. That it aids research in behavioural economics and helps to prove or disprove economic phenomena is nothing to sniff at either.
(800 words)
16th June 2010
Gautam Mukherjee
Shortened version of this review appeared with the same title in the Sunday Pioneer on 11th July 2010 in the Agenda Section on the BOOKS page and also online at http://www.dailypioneer.com/
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