Nash Equilibrium and Indian Politics

 

The fundamental concept of an “equilibrium” in a game comes from the work of John Nash. The concept, known as Nash equilibrium, can be applied in Politics for any democratic election.

If you have studied economics, you can easily remember the Prison dilemma example where two criminals have only one Nash equilibrium where both un-cooperate and defect.

For non-economic students, John Forbes Nash was an American mathematician widely famous in economics. Nash did a Ph.D. in 1950 from Princeton University with only a 28-page dissertation on non-cooperative games. Nash won the Nobel Prize and one Hollywood movie about his life was made called “A Beautiful Mind”. I suggest you please review Nash Equilibrium & background for more details before you proceed with this article (Wiki & Movie).

In the Indian election context, let us take one example and certain assumptions for simplicity before we analyze all possible equilibrium and Nash equilibrium. This article is an attempt to answer certain prevailing drawbacks in Indian democracy and why political reform is almost impossible for candidates to be on an honest path unless they believe in some miracle.

Let us consider that there is a Lok Sabha election in 2019 at some constituency, say, Gandhinagar. There are two main contestants for two national major parties. E.g. BJP (“B”) & Congress (“C”). There is one more very good potential independent candidate (“I”) based on his social career and interest in continuing his social service by joining politics but not by joining a political party. Let us recognize them by the first letter: B, C, and I. There are other candidates but those are not very significant to win the election.

During election time, all three candidates have two paths:

H:  Being honest on their own social profile so far and making genuine promises if they win the election (say, “H”)

DH: Dis-honest on their own social profile, share false allegations about other candidates, make ungenuine big promises & freebies with people if they win the election (say, “DH”)

For simplicity, let us assume that “B” and “C” candidates opt for the honest & dishonest path together. It means, “BC” either chooses the honest path or a dishonest path but there is no possibility that one opts for an honest and another for dishonest path at the same time.  Another assumption is that it is well known that “I” is a good candidate and willing to join politics to continue his social services being in the services.

In the above example, all possible strategies can be shown in the matrix below:

	Honest	Dis-Honest
Honest	BC-H, I-H	BC-DH, I-H
Dis-Honest	BC-H, I-DH	BC-DH, I-DH

 

We can analyze all four scenarios from the above matrix to see the best equilibrium for contested candidates:

Scenario-1 (BC-H, I-H): This is an ideal scenario for any democracy when all candidates “B”, “C” and “I” are honest on their social profiles and make honest promises to the people what can be done if they win the election. This scenario is unlikely as any one candidate can opt for the dis-honest path and take the advantage by making false promises to people. Why people will choose candidates who are promising less than the candidate who makes promises for everything?  

Scenario-2 (BC-DH, I-H): This scenario is a realistic scenario when any ideal or honest person wants to enter into politics with honesty but other candidates from traditional parties are dishonest and make false promises such as big hospitals, schools, jobs, etc. to lure the people votes. Candidate “I” knows the limit of the MP Funds & tenure and is strict to the genuine promises. People again decide on either candidate “B” or “C” based on If-Then kind of promises rather than realistic fewer promises by “I”.  This scenario is realistic (not very frequent) but always disappointing for honest candidates. 

Scenario-3 (BC-H, I-DH): This is a bit unrealistic scenario when candidates “B” or “C” from national parties with many years of experience are fully honest on their social profiles & promises and one independent candidate based on dishonesty can make advantages to lure the people votes. This is also unrealistic in the sense that candidate “B” or “C” will talk about their own social profile rather than talking about their own party, central leadership face, etc. This scenario is also ruled out and cannot be the best equilibrium in Indian politics.

Scenario-4 (BC-DH, I-DH): Considering the above scenarios where any candidate on an honest path cannot be a stable or unrealistic scenario, this is a most prominent scenario in Indian politics when everyone dis-honest on their own social profile, make false allegations about other candidates and do big false promises like big hospitals, schools, jobs, etc to the people to win the elections. In this scenario, candidates “B” or “C” will have the advantage of party funds and party volunteers for the campaign but candidate “I” has no other option except to be dishonest and fight the election with his own resources & money. 

This is the scenario when no other candidate can be better by choosing an alternate path. Then such a scenario in Indian politics is called Nash Equilibrium.

	Honest	Dis-Honest
Honest	BC-H, I-H	BC-DH, I-H
Dis-Honest	BC-H, I-DH	BC_DH, I-DH

 

Conclusions:

This article demonstrates the best optimal strategy in Indian politics and why it does not allow any good independent candidates to enter into politics and win the election. It does not mean that the only way to win the election is to be dishonest but it definitely says that what are the realistic & sustainable strategies to win the election in Indian democracy. This paper does not discourage good people from entering into politics but explains why honest people can not win the election easily. If the purpose is to serve the country and do social services, there are other ways to do so without entering into politics which have not been covered in this paper.