Of course the terrorists, having observed the situation well, used a white Ambassador (with red light of course) to enter the Parliament in December 2001, endangering the lives of the same ministers and babus who led them to their gatecrashing tactic, a sort of grand finale of ‘defection begets defection’ situation.
LACK OF STANDARDIZATION
Perhaps it is this lack of systems-orientation among us that ensures we are also a country without any standardization. Consider this. When you travel in other countries, you find their roads, shoulders, sidewalks, road signs, road dividers, speed breakers, etc. all so standardized that when you move from one province to the next, or one state to the other, you do not find much variation in these standards. You always know, more or less, what to expect. But in India, you can never be sure what to expect around the next corner. Leave alone across panchayats, provinces or states, even within a city there is little standardization. Our speed breakers come in all shapes and sizes and if they account for a disproportionately large percentage of all road accidents in India, it is nobody’s concern. Our road signs, when they are there, are standardized neither in their content nor in their position and not even in their enforcement. Our vehicle number plates are tolerated in any language. Our road dividers could be anything ranging from slabs of stone or cement to tin barrels and plain boulders. Does this all tie up with prisoner’s dilemma? The fact is that we need to cooperate first to standardize anything. This will, in turn, generate cooperation from the ‘standardized’ system, as it benefits all. But a defection on our part in not making that extra effort to standardize our systems begets defection by a huge non-standard ad hoc system.
OUR PROPENSITY TO LOOK FOR LOOPHOLES IN LAWS
Defection is our national trait. So also is looking for loopholes in practically every law or system. In fact much of the Indian legal system, particularly at higher levels, revolves around capitalizing on this trait. Be it our company law or criminal law, we thrive on finding loopholes in these laws.
If the government announces a higher interest income on fixed deposits for senior citizens, we would find hundreds of names, including those of family servants, their offspring and cousins, to make use of that provision. The same may be true for ration cards or a subsidy. Finding loopholes around income tax or various other taxes is of course too well known to merit enumeration. ‘You show me a system, a law, a rule and I’ll show you a couple of loopholes for each’ is our credo. It requires a measure of self-regulation to recognize that the true role of lawyers is to pursue genuine prosecution, defence or advice under the ambit of the available legal provisions and not to get the crooks off the hook using legal loopholes in those provisions.
The iterative PD situation, as a consequence of large-scale defection, is there for all of us to see—a whole country full of defections—so full that our legal system barely works, with millions upon millions of long-wound cases piling up in our decrepit court houses.
Perhaps it is about time we addressed that poser termed as the ‘Veerappan Dilemma’ in the prologue.
CHAPTER 9
Veerappan Dilemma: The Poser Answered
We talked of the Veerappan Dilemma in the prologue and my poser was whether you saw any realistic chance of you or any of the other nineteen claimants getting that Rs 50-crore reward. ‘Pretty unlikely,’ you might have surmised after much deliberation.
Your argument on whether or not to write might have been as follows: ‘If I do not write to the chief minister’s office, I am not getting the award anyway. But if I write, there is always a chance, however minuscule, that the other nineteen are all by some chance posted in Antarctica, and do not receive the chief minister’s letter in time. So I might as well write.’
So you write. And so do each one of the other nineteen, arguing exactly the same way. In all probability, the chief minister’s office ends up receiving twenty identical notes, when a mere two would have sufficed to disqualify all the twenty from getting the award.
Now this is extremely frustrating. There does not seem to be any way for any of the twenty to win the award. If the chances are so minimal, you ought not to waste your time writing that letter. If a good many of the twenty think that way and choose not to waste their time, there is always a minute chance that one of the twenty decides to do otherwise and gets to be the lucky winner. It might as well be you. So you decide to write. So do the others, all for the same reason!
Also if you do not write, you do not qualify for the award anyway, and so you decide to write. But in doing so, you also kiss goodbye to any chance of laying your hands on the reward.
But wait a minute. Don’t despair yet. Recall, I said that all the twenty shortlisted claimants are assumed to be very intelligent.
THE RESOLUTION
So let us say you arrive at the following resolution about whether or not to write that cursed letter claiming the reward.
‘I will put twenty balls, numbered 1 to 20, into a bowl. I will mentally decide on a certain number between 1 and 20, say, number 5. I will give the bowl a good shake, and draw a ball blindfolded. I will then open my blindfold and read the number of the ball I drew. If this happens to be a number other than 5, I will not write the letter. But if the ball I drew is indeed number 5, I will write that letter. In short, I will write that letter with a probability of one in twenty and not write that letter with a probability of 19/20.’
Assume that each of the other nineteen claimants also makes an identical resolution.
Nineteen out of twenty chances are that you do not draw number 5 and hence, in accordance with your resolution, you will not write the letter claiming the reward. But resolutions are often for breaking. If you do not draw number 5, chances are you begin to argue with yourself along one of the following lines:
‘Now that according to the accursed draw I am not supposed to write that stupid letter I am out of the reward anyway. Why should I leave it to any other bloke to get lucky? So let me write in any case!’
Or,
‘Oh God, I should have drawn the ball with my right hand instead of my left. So let me draw again. And if this turns out to be a number other than 5 once again, I’ll try one more time . . . third time final . . .’
In short you would ‘cheat’ against your resolution till you get a draw that suits you, that is, gets you to write, or you simply write anyway, chucking your resolution.
But if you are capable of such thinking or action, so are all the other nineteen. So very likely, nobody may be a respector of the resolution, and your reward remains elusive.
But let us assume that each one adheres to the resolution and does not cheat. Under this condition, you realize one of the twenty claimants might well end up getting that reward. The reason is based on simple probability.
The probability that any one claimant draws a ball with a specific pre-decided number and therefore gets to write is one in twenty. Since there are twenty claimants, the overall probability that only one of them will draw the pre-decided number and hence be the only one to write that letter is slightly under 38 per cent, a rather high probability, considering you did not see the faintest possibility of any claimant getting that award.1
In short, if each one followed the resolution honestly and steadfastly, the probability that one of the twenty claimants will get the award goes up to about two in five. It is like saying, if you scrupulously follow that resolution, you have bought into a lottery that gives a 38 per cent chance that one of the twenty claimants will win Rs 50 crore. That’s a pretty good lottery.
SHRÖDINGER’S CAT
Yet, how many of us are capable of sticking to a resolution? Don’t we typically wonder, ‘How is my action related to others’ actions? Aren’t our actions entirely independent of each other, just like my drawing a number from my jar is independent of others drawing the numbers from theirs? If so, and if all the rest are sticking to their resolutions, am I not better off departing from the resolution and writing that letter anyway? I certainly can�
�t be worse off doing that? Obviously what I do or do not do cannot influence the others?’
Your action may be independent of the others’, but what reason do you have to believe that others will not think the way you do? Others too would have reasoned similarly and dispatched their letters posthaste, ensuring no one got that award. In a way, everybody’s actions are independent and yet dependent at the same time; just like light is both a particle and a wave at the same time; or like Shrödinger’s Cat2 which is both alive and dead at the same time.
Yet, this quantum-mechanics-like dilemma hides a fundamental and absolute truth, namely, if everyone scrupulously follows that resolution, you (and for that matter everyone) stand a pretty good chance of getting that big booty; but if you cheat, it is curtains down on a big fortune. That is why the right conduct is to be internally driven not externally driven. ‘Am I doing the right thing?’ is the only relevant question. That ‘others may cheat’ is irrelevant. That route of questioning never resolves the PD-like dilemma.
VEERAPPAN DILEMMA COMPOUNDED
Assume that the chief minister of the neighbouring state doubles the stake and announces a Rs 100-crore award to those who helped in trapping Veerappan. This state too has a large number of claimants for the award. In fact, the numbers are soaring so high that the chief minister, in a bid to pre-empt the rush, has thrown open the award to the entire state with a population of some ten crore.
The format of the chief minister’s announcement is somewhat different from that of the first state. This format announces the total reward money to be Rs 100 crore/N for each claimant, where N is the total number of claims received by the chief minister’s office. The chief minister also adds there is no reason why an individual should be restricted to a single claim, given that people’s abilities can vary widely from one to another. So each subject of the state is allowed up to a thousand claims. But other terms remain more or less the same as in the first state, such as ‘If you don’t send in your note, you don’t qualify for the reward,’ etc.
But the state government is eco-friendly and does not want to waste too much paper on multiple claims. It asks its subjects to use a format similar to that used by the other state except that it provides a small box at the top right-hand corner of the note, where one could merely write the total number of claims one was tendering, as indicated below:
If yours is the only note that the chief minister’s office receives and you decide to send in a single claim, you could pocket the entire sum as your reward as in that case N will be 1. Little chance though. In fact you will be lucky if each resident sends in one claim each, so that you land a tenner (Rs 100 crore/ 10 crore). More likely, each citizen will tender the maximum entitlement of 1000 claims which means you will more likely take home barely over one paisa on your single claim. So there is no way you are going to make a single claim. You, like all the others, reason it is better to make the maximum number of claims possible, 1000. So whether the entire population of the state sends a single claim each or 1000 claims each the result is one and the same.
Do you think there is any reasonable chance of any one individual winning the entire reward? Well, it is not as bad as it looks. In fact your chances are far better than in a lottery. Let us reason as follows:
If each citizen independently resolves to throw a ten-crore sided die (or uses a random number generator) and sends in one claim with a probability of one in 10,00,00,000 and does not send any claim with a probability of 9,99,99,999 in 10,00,00,000, there is still approximately 37 per cent [(9,99,99,999/10,00,00,000)9,99,99,999] chance that one of the ten crore citizens will get the entire Rs 100 crore! But resolutions are known to be weak universally. If only we knew what weak resolutions can cost!
As you will notice, the Veerappan Dilemma is quite similar to the prisoner’s dilemma, in that it is like a multipeople onetime prisoner’s dilemma and the logic for everyone is as symmetrical in this poser as it is in the case of one-time prisoner’s dilemma. There are no opportunities for the participants to learn through repeated iterations. In fact, many of our collective behaviour issues raised in some of the last few chapters fall under this category. Imagine, if only we, as an entire people, had the necessary resolve in our character to invest, say, in a rainwater collection and recharge system in our backyard, because that is the correct thing to do, our national water shortage problem could get solved. Of course as a free loader I may be better off not investing my money and yet benefit from the rising water table, thanks to the actions of the others. But if I think that way, Schrodinger’s Cat tells me that is what everybody else may be thinking, and our water table may never rise!
CHAPTER 10
Game Theory and the Gita
A jawan is posted to Kargil, where the battle is on. He faces a dilemma. If he proceeds to Kargil, he may end up paying the highest price—his life—thus leaving his young wife and children destitute. If he refuses to go, he may face humiliation and possibly a jail sentence for desertion or dereliction of duty. Still it is a rational choice as the price he has to pay for desertion is negligible when compared to losing one’s life and leaving one’s family destitute. Yet, he proceeds to the battlefront, like all other jawans. One wonders if any jawan even considers the situation as a dilemma. He simply does what he considers is his duty, his dharma.
I am not religious, at least not in the conventional sense of the term. Nor am I well-versed in any of the religious scriptures, the Bhagavad Gita included. My understanding of religions and scriptures is simple: all religions are fundamentally noble; none asks you to do wrong; each religion has tolerance towards your sins; all of them have a good dose of fiction in the form of some really far-flung mythological stories, many of them truly spectacular and entertaining, not unlike The Lord of the Rings . . .
Like most simple folk, my early view of god was shaped by what I observed around me. Going by this observation, god was like a petty government official. It was clear to me that god, like the government babu, needs to be kept in good humour by periodic offerings and promises of this and that; that he needs some inducement if I want him to do something for me—and the bigger my wish the bigger will have to be the inducement offered; that it is better to wait and see if he does his bit, before I keep my bargain; that, if he did his bit and I did not keep my bargain, he will come after me for recovery with threats of dire consequences in this life or the next; that he has a healthy appetite and takes umbrage if you eat ahead of him, and so forth.
I also learnt that god is not without his sadistic side, so that in lieu of material inducements, you could also compensate him by animal sacrifices or some masochistic acts of your own, such as starving yourself sick or torturing yourself cruel.
This idea of god shaped my attitude towards practising religions, which naturally was not very positive. So what am I doing, writing a chapter on the Gita? Till a few years ago, all I knew about the Gita was half a sloka, which was:
Karmanyavädhikarastey mä faleshu kadächanä
Meaning:
You have right only to the action and never to the fruit of the action.
I did not know for quite some time that this was not a canto in itself but had a second half to it:
Karmany evädhikaras te mä phalesu kadäcanä
Ma karma-phala-hetur bhur mä te sango stv akarmni
Bhagavad 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 naive. Taking this bit of verse as a random sample of what the Gita was all about, I thought I understood why we weren’t a 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 at a traffic crossing, what is the correct course of action? To give alms and risk reinforcing the system, or desist and risk the child going hungry? Which is the lesser evil?
Games Indians Play Page 12