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Bargaining with a Rising India: Lessons from the Mahabharata
The need to negotiate effectively with India is only growing as its power rises. Understanding the negotiating culture wherein India's bargaining behaviour is embedded forms a crucial step to facilitate this process. In the literature on international negotiation, experimental studies point to specific behavioural characteristics of Indian negotiators. Empirical analyses confirm these findings, and many suggest that the sources of India's negotiation behaviour are deep-rooted and culture-specific, going beyond what standard explanations of interest group politics, partisan politics, or institutional politics would suggest. But there are very few works that trace these sources. Extensive sociological and anthropological, and comparative political studies remain confined to their own fields, and do not develop their implications for Indian foreign policy or negotiation. There is a conspicuous lack of works that attempt to unpack the "negotiating culture" variable using literary sources.
This book aims to fill both these gaps. It focuses on India's negotiating traditions through the lens of the classical Sanskrit text, the Mahabharata, and investigates the continuities and changes in India's negotiation behaviour as a rising power.
This book aims to fill both these gaps. It focuses on India's negotiating traditions through the lens of the classical Sanskrit text, the Mahabharata, and investigates the continuities and changes in India's negotiation behaviour as a rising power.
248 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2014
1 person is currently reading
33 people want to read
About the author
Amrita Narlikar
16 books5 followersAmrita Narlikar is the president of the GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studiesand Professor at the Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences at the University of Hamburg, Germany. She was previously Reader in International Political Economy in the Department of Politics and International Studies (POLIS) at the University of Cambridge, founding Director of the Centre for Rising Powers, and a Fellow of Darwin College, Cambridge. She is an expert on international negotiations, the political economy of international trade, and rising powers.
Narlikar read history for her B.A. at St. Stephen's College, Delhi and graduated in 1996 with a M.A. from the School of International Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, earning the highest marks in the school's record. She was subsequently educated at Balliol College Oxford, where she completed her M.Phil. and D.Phil. in International Relations in 2000. She was a Junior Research Fellow at St John's College Oxford and has held academic positions in various universities including a Visiting Fellowship at Yale University, and an International Visiting Chair at Université Libre de Bruxelles. She was a member of the Warwick Commission on Multilateral Trade.
Narlikar is the author or editor of 9 books and has published more than 50 scholarly articles. Her books include New Powers: How to become one and how to manage them (Columbia University Press, 2010), The World Trade Organization: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2005), and International Trade and Developing Countries: Coalitions in the GATT and WTO (Routledge, 2003). She is the editor of Deadlocks in Multilateral Negotiations: Causes and Solutions (Cambridge University Press, 2010) and guest editor of a May 2013 special issue of International Affairs on rising powers.
Narlikar is the daughter of journalist and author Aruna Narlikar and physicist Anant V. Narlikar. She is the granddaughter of physicist Vishnu Vasudev Narlikar.
(from Wikipedia)
Narlikar read history for her B.A. at St. Stephen's College, Delhi and graduated in 1996 with a M.A. from the School of International Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, earning the highest marks in the school's record. She was subsequently educated at Balliol College Oxford, where she completed her M.Phil. and D.Phil. in International Relations in 2000. She was a Junior Research Fellow at St John's College Oxford and has held academic positions in various universities including a Visiting Fellowship at Yale University, and an International Visiting Chair at Université Libre de Bruxelles. She was a member of the Warwick Commission on Multilateral Trade.
Narlikar is the author or editor of 9 books and has published more than 50 scholarly articles. Her books include New Powers: How to become one and how to manage them (Columbia University Press, 2010), The World Trade Organization: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2005), and International Trade and Developing Countries: Coalitions in the GATT and WTO (Routledge, 2003). She is the editor of Deadlocks in Multilateral Negotiations: Causes and Solutions (Cambridge University Press, 2010) and guest editor of a May 2013 special issue of International Affairs on rising powers.
Narlikar is the daughter of journalist and author Aruna Narlikar and physicist Anant V. Narlikar. She is the granddaughter of physicist Vishnu Vasudev Narlikar.
(from Wikipedia)
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October 3, 2021
Book: Bargaining with a Rising India: Lessons from the Mahabharata
Author: Amrita Narlikar and Aruna Narlikar
Publisher: Oxford University Press; Edition (24 April 2014)
Language: English
Hardcover: 264 pages
Item Weight: 450 g
Dimensions: 23.37 x 2.03 x 16.26 cm
Price: 939/-
Management is a conception that is centuries old and has expanded with the civilizations of the world. India is treasured as a civilization that has been shaping the world for aeons.
The notion ‘management’ is not new to India. In contradiction of the popular conviction that the topic ‘management’, the way it is being known and practiced today, originated in the west and progressed to the east; the subject management has always been preached and practiced since the time of puranas in India.
Not much is known of the administration of the very ancient times, up to about 1500 BC. The earliest evidences are contained in the Rigveda which was composed at the time of the first supposed Aryan immigration, said to have occurred around 1500 BC.
The Rigveda consists of 1028 hymns devoted to the gods of the Aryans and was composed by an assortment of families of priests. (They) provide subsidiary evidence on the life of the Aryans.
The other three Vedas— Sama, Yajur and Atharva were written later. Rishis wrote the Brahmanas and Aranyakas to illuminate the mystifying mantras and passages of the Vedas. The Upanishads compiled around 550 BC give a spiritual exposition of the Vedas.
The Mahabharata war was fought around 900 BC and was in all probability written in or around 300 BC.
It is imperative to note the appearance of these texts which have held sway over people’s minds and live1s over centuries and across the length and breadth of the country. They have served as an extremely important and noteworthy source of information, inspiration and integration.
During subsequent waves of immigration, although the population was thin and shifting, a simple administrative structure had been set up, with a king, a samiti consisting of a general assembly of people, and a sabha composed of elders.
Although the details are blurred, it would appear that the ruler called ‘raja’ was elected by the samiti of people. If he failed to perform his duty well, he could be turned out but could seek re-election. His jurisdiction extended over several mandais (regions) made up of janpadas (a district consisting of several villages).
The ruler had a religious head to advise him on religious ethics, codes and tenets. The primary duty of the king was to protect his subjects, and, if necessary to go to war with his enemies. The people in the samiti and sabha were sovereign and supreme.
Some form of participatory government can, thus, be seen to have prevailed in Vedic times. This system, in all probability, steadily turned into one of hereditary rulers.
Though monarchy was the commonplace feature of the Vedic State as well as the pre-and post-Vedic periods, there were in existence ‘republics’ in addition to certain oligarchic forms of government, the latter representing a ‘degenerated’ type of machinery without the apposite and efficient republican devices of popular control.
In addition, the fourth type of government also existed which had, on the Spartan model, two kings exercising co-equal executive authority.
Indian administration and management reflects the ethos, beliefs and intellect of ancient Indian culture. The tradition of Indian ethos goes back to more than 3500 years, way before the days when modern management took root.
Management had its stronghold since ancient Harrapan period, and has been a continuous process and is still in its development stage.
India has never been a simple negotiating partner for the West. Stephen Cohen, for example, writes that India ‘seems to relish getting to no’; further, the West has long been ‘irritated’ and ‘frustrated’ by India’s negotiation style. Experimental studies further confirm that Indians are tough negotiators, showing reluctance to conciliation in conjunction with a willingness to refuse offers.
There are many conceivable clarifications as to why India has proved to be a hard negotiating partner, including its comparatively recent colonial past, particular configurations of domestic interests, and bureaucratic politics in domestic institutions.
To come to grips with the Indian concept of management and negotiations, a better understanding of cultural variables is necessary. While there is a great variety of means that can be used to access national traditions, we chose to focus on a major literary source in the form of one of the two great epics that have informed Indian politics and morality for centuries: the Mahabharata.
This is a book that brings together scholarship on modern-day ‘conciliation behaviour’ and classical readings.
The subject may appear to be unusual at first glance. In fact, the engagement between classical theories and current problems is well rooted in an established repertoire of writings, such as works that apply the tenets of Clausewitz, Machiavelli, and Sun Tzu to understanding concerns of modern statehood, statecraft, war, and bargaining.
What is astounding, though, is that Indian classical theories have been put to only limited use with reference to today’s problems; bar a few stray applications of Kautilya’s Arthashastra with regard to understanding or recommending foreign policy strategies, the rich classical India scholarship that refers directly or indirectly to bargaining remains scarcely utilized.
This book aims to address this gap.
The book has been divided into five chapters:
1. Playing Hardball? India in International Negotiations
2. India’s Negotiation Strategy: The Heroism of Hard Bargaining?
3. Framing from a Moral High Horse
4. Coalitions: Choosing Allies, Sustaining Friendships
5. Time: The Long Shadow of the Past and the Future
In the introductory chapter, the author presents the intellectual conundrum that underlies the book: to what extent does India’s bargaining behaviour, as a rising power, reflect cultural continuities?
Section 1.1, inaugurates by highlighting the importance of cultural variables as a route to understanding bargaining and negotiation. It further elucidates the logic that underlies our choice of the Mahabharata as a lens into India’s bargaining traditions, standards, and convictions. In Section 1.2, the book offers a conceptualization of negotiation behaviour.
The concepts introduced in this section are used throughout the book.
Chater 2 proceeds in seven sections. Primarily, the author provides an outline of the standard classification of negotiation strategies, and also in brief outlines the overriding trend in negotiation strategies of India since independence and as a rising power.
Sections 2.2 to 2.6 argues insights into conciliation strategies as offered by the Mahabharata, drawing on stories from the pre-war parts of the epic (Section 2.2), bargaining strategies in the course of thewar (Section 2.3), negotiation strategies in the post-conflict period and also in the related stories and legends (Section 2.4), and the exceptions to the leading trends (Section 2.5).
Each subdivision appraises the insights offered by the stories. These insights are then brought together in Section 2.6, where the author conducts an investigation of India’s leading trends in bargaining behaviour in addition to deviations from the norm. Section 2.7 concludes the discussion.
Chapter 3 begins in Section 3.1 with a short abridgment of the notion of framing, and the role that it plays in international negotiation. Using secondary sources, the book also highlights the prevailing framing trends associated with independent and modern India’s negotiations with the outside world. Sections 3.2 to 3.5 discuss specific episodes of bargaining from the Mahabharata, which fit within the four categories that were outlined in Chapter 1 (i.e. pre-war conciliation, wartime concession, post-war conciliation and related stories and exceptions).
Chapter 4, demonstrates that there is little evident about how one chooses one’s friends, either as an individual or as a state. How a rising power chooses its companions and allies can offer significant information regarding the vision of global order that the state is still in the process of developing, or may even be signalling, as outsiders speculate about its emerging role.
In the first section, the book presents an impression of the logic behind coalition formation and the various shapes that coalitions can take. It also provides a brief account of the coalitions that India has participated in historically, and the trends in its coalition diplomacy as a rising power. Sections 4.2 to 4.5 provide an examination of the coalition patterns that the reader finds in the Mahabharata, and also discusses their implications for understanding India’s negotiating culture.
Section 4.6 offers a thorough scrutiny of India’s coalition behaviour in the two regimes of international trade and nuclear non-proliferation. Section 4.7 concludes the debate.
The concluding chapter 5, in parallel with the last three, proceeds in seven parts. First, the book presents a hypothetical précis of the notion of time in bargaining situations. The author also presents a short debate of how some of these hypothetical ideas have been applied to India’s negotiation behaviour. The book provides an examination into how far these findings are reflected in India’s traditional bargaining. In Sections 5.2 to 5.5, the book concentrates on episodes of the Mahabharata to examine how the assorted protagonists were affected by and used the notion of time in different negotiation settings. Section 5.6 inspects the continuities and changes in the conciliation behaviour of a rising India, focusing chiefly on the idea of time. Section 5.7 provides the finale.
The reader commences this book with the following question: To what extent is the bargaining behaviour of a rising India today a reflection of the country’s cultural traditions?
All chapters of this book point to some or the other key continuity in India’s bargaining behaviour, by drawing on examples from the Mahabharata.
In the concluding chapter, the author begins by highlighting the relevance and contribution of this research, summarizes its findings, and offers several policy recommendations for those wishing to bargain more effectively with India.
One of the most unique books you’ll ever read!
Grab a copy if you choose.
Author: Amrita Narlikar and Aruna Narlikar
Publisher: Oxford University Press; Edition (24 April 2014)
Language: English
Hardcover: 264 pages
Item Weight: 450 g
Dimensions: 23.37 x 2.03 x 16.26 cm
Price: 939/-
Management is a conception that is centuries old and has expanded with the civilizations of the world. India is treasured as a civilization that has been shaping the world for aeons.
The notion ‘management’ is not new to India. In contradiction of the popular conviction that the topic ‘management’, the way it is being known and practiced today, originated in the west and progressed to the east; the subject management has always been preached and practiced since the time of puranas in India.
Not much is known of the administration of the very ancient times, up to about 1500 BC. The earliest evidences are contained in the Rigveda which was composed at the time of the first supposed Aryan immigration, said to have occurred around 1500 BC.
The Rigveda consists of 1028 hymns devoted to the gods of the Aryans and was composed by an assortment of families of priests. (They) provide subsidiary evidence on the life of the Aryans.
The other three Vedas— Sama, Yajur and Atharva were written later. Rishis wrote the Brahmanas and Aranyakas to illuminate the mystifying mantras and passages of the Vedas. The Upanishads compiled around 550 BC give a spiritual exposition of the Vedas.
The Mahabharata war was fought around 900 BC and was in all probability written in or around 300 BC.
It is imperative to note the appearance of these texts which have held sway over people’s minds and live1s over centuries and across the length and breadth of the country. They have served as an extremely important and noteworthy source of information, inspiration and integration.
During subsequent waves of immigration, although the population was thin and shifting, a simple administrative structure had been set up, with a king, a samiti consisting of a general assembly of people, and a sabha composed of elders.
Although the details are blurred, it would appear that the ruler called ‘raja’ was elected by the samiti of people. If he failed to perform his duty well, he could be turned out but could seek re-election. His jurisdiction extended over several mandais (regions) made up of janpadas (a district consisting of several villages).
The ruler had a religious head to advise him on religious ethics, codes and tenets. The primary duty of the king was to protect his subjects, and, if necessary to go to war with his enemies. The people in the samiti and sabha were sovereign and supreme.
Some form of participatory government can, thus, be seen to have prevailed in Vedic times. This system, in all probability, steadily turned into one of hereditary rulers.
Though monarchy was the commonplace feature of the Vedic State as well as the pre-and post-Vedic periods, there were in existence ‘republics’ in addition to certain oligarchic forms of government, the latter representing a ‘degenerated’ type of machinery without the apposite and efficient republican devices of popular control.
In addition, the fourth type of government also existed which had, on the Spartan model, two kings exercising co-equal executive authority.
Indian administration and management reflects the ethos, beliefs and intellect of ancient Indian culture. The tradition of Indian ethos goes back to more than 3500 years, way before the days when modern management took root.
Management had its stronghold since ancient Harrapan period, and has been a continuous process and is still in its development stage.
India has never been a simple negotiating partner for the West. Stephen Cohen, for example, writes that India ‘seems to relish getting to no’; further, the West has long been ‘irritated’ and ‘frustrated’ by India’s negotiation style. Experimental studies further confirm that Indians are tough negotiators, showing reluctance to conciliation in conjunction with a willingness to refuse offers.
There are many conceivable clarifications as to why India has proved to be a hard negotiating partner, including its comparatively recent colonial past, particular configurations of domestic interests, and bureaucratic politics in domestic institutions.
To come to grips with the Indian concept of management and negotiations, a better understanding of cultural variables is necessary. While there is a great variety of means that can be used to access national traditions, we chose to focus on a major literary source in the form of one of the two great epics that have informed Indian politics and morality for centuries: the Mahabharata.
This is a book that brings together scholarship on modern-day ‘conciliation behaviour’ and classical readings.
The subject may appear to be unusual at first glance. In fact, the engagement between classical theories and current problems is well rooted in an established repertoire of writings, such as works that apply the tenets of Clausewitz, Machiavelli, and Sun Tzu to understanding concerns of modern statehood, statecraft, war, and bargaining.
What is astounding, though, is that Indian classical theories have been put to only limited use with reference to today’s problems; bar a few stray applications of Kautilya’s Arthashastra with regard to understanding or recommending foreign policy strategies, the rich classical India scholarship that refers directly or indirectly to bargaining remains scarcely utilized.
This book aims to address this gap.
The book has been divided into five chapters:
1. Playing Hardball? India in International Negotiations
2. India’s Negotiation Strategy: The Heroism of Hard Bargaining?
3. Framing from a Moral High Horse
4. Coalitions: Choosing Allies, Sustaining Friendships
5. Time: The Long Shadow of the Past and the Future
In the introductory chapter, the author presents the intellectual conundrum that underlies the book: to what extent does India’s bargaining behaviour, as a rising power, reflect cultural continuities?
Section 1.1, inaugurates by highlighting the importance of cultural variables as a route to understanding bargaining and negotiation. It further elucidates the logic that underlies our choice of the Mahabharata as a lens into India’s bargaining traditions, standards, and convictions. In Section 1.2, the book offers a conceptualization of negotiation behaviour.
The concepts introduced in this section are used throughout the book.
Chater 2 proceeds in seven sections. Primarily, the author provides an outline of the standard classification of negotiation strategies, and also in brief outlines the overriding trend in negotiation strategies of India since independence and as a rising power.
Sections 2.2 to 2.6 argues insights into conciliation strategies as offered by the Mahabharata, drawing on stories from the pre-war parts of the epic (Section 2.2), bargaining strategies in the course of thewar (Section 2.3), negotiation strategies in the post-conflict period and also in the related stories and legends (Section 2.4), and the exceptions to the leading trends (Section 2.5).
Each subdivision appraises the insights offered by the stories. These insights are then brought together in Section 2.6, where the author conducts an investigation of India’s leading trends in bargaining behaviour in addition to deviations from the norm. Section 2.7 concludes the discussion.
Chapter 3 begins in Section 3.1 with a short abridgment of the notion of framing, and the role that it plays in international negotiation. Using secondary sources, the book also highlights the prevailing framing trends associated with independent and modern India’s negotiations with the outside world. Sections 3.2 to 3.5 discuss specific episodes of bargaining from the Mahabharata, which fit within the four categories that were outlined in Chapter 1 (i.e. pre-war conciliation, wartime concession, post-war conciliation and related stories and exceptions).
Chapter 4, demonstrates that there is little evident about how one chooses one’s friends, either as an individual or as a state. How a rising power chooses its companions and allies can offer significant information regarding the vision of global order that the state is still in the process of developing, or may even be signalling, as outsiders speculate about its emerging role.
In the first section, the book presents an impression of the logic behind coalition formation and the various shapes that coalitions can take. It also provides a brief account of the coalitions that India has participated in historically, and the trends in its coalition diplomacy as a rising power. Sections 4.2 to 4.5 provide an examination of the coalition patterns that the reader finds in the Mahabharata, and also discusses their implications for understanding India’s negotiating culture.
Section 4.6 offers a thorough scrutiny of India’s coalition behaviour in the two regimes of international trade and nuclear non-proliferation. Section 4.7 concludes the debate.
The concluding chapter 5, in parallel with the last three, proceeds in seven parts. First, the book presents a hypothetical précis of the notion of time in bargaining situations. The author also presents a short debate of how some of these hypothetical ideas have been applied to India’s negotiation behaviour. The book provides an examination into how far these findings are reflected in India’s traditional bargaining. In Sections 5.2 to 5.5, the book concentrates on episodes of the Mahabharata to examine how the assorted protagonists were affected by and used the notion of time in different negotiation settings. Section 5.6 inspects the continuities and changes in the conciliation behaviour of a rising India, focusing chiefly on the idea of time. Section 5.7 provides the finale.
The reader commences this book with the following question: To what extent is the bargaining behaviour of a rising India today a reflection of the country’s cultural traditions?
All chapters of this book point to some or the other key continuity in India’s bargaining behaviour, by drawing on examples from the Mahabharata.
In the concluding chapter, the author begins by highlighting the relevance and contribution of this research, summarizes its findings, and offers several policy recommendations for those wishing to bargain more effectively with India.
One of the most unique books you’ll ever read!
Grab a copy if you choose.
Displaying 1 of 1 review