by Jayram Daya, R. Srinivasan and Naresh Jotwani

Cooperation and competition both play a role in our collective life — sometimes more of this, sometimes more of that. However, a self-styled ‘capitalist’ sees red at the mere mention of cooperation, whereas a self-styled ‘communist’ argues for forcefully imposing cooperation on the whole society.

Suppose we put all such western ideologies to one side and ask: What does our lived, empirical reality say?