TCA Srinivasa-Raghavan: Karat & 'Grim Trigger' strategy

LINE & LENGTH

Is Karat fighting for his own survival? Nothing else explains his behaviour.

Three questions need answering. First, why did Comrade Prakash Karat go off the deep end? Second, what will be the implications for the CPI (M)? Third, can Karat think?

Regarding the first question, my theory is that Karat is fighting for his own survival. He has made such a mess of things that the CPI (M)'s state units want him out.

The Congress knew this. That is perhaps why the prime minister dared the CPI (M) to withdraw support. He knew it would never come to that because Karat is isolated.

To save himself from his own, Karat had to swing his bat. He mis-timed and has been caught in the deep. Jyoti Basu, Subhash Chakraborty and Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, to name just three CPI (M) big shots, have criticised him. Subhash Chakraborty, a senior cabinet minister in West Bengal, just stopped short of calling him an idiot: "It is idiotic to pull down the UPA government." So, informally, at least, Karat is now almost history.

The story is Kerala is not very different. Karat has made a huge mess there also. Three months ago, he suspended Kerala Chief Minister V S Achuthanandan and party State Secretary Pinarayi Vijayan from the politburo because they were fighting in public. That meant they cared tuppence for Karat. They, too, want him out.

Karat will not be the first political leader to raise the stakes massively when faced with sustained hostility from his own followers. It is an established tactic and the list of those who have used it, not just in India but globally, is longer than a giraffe's neck.

The CPI (M) central leadership is a latecomer to the joys that follow the assertion of state-level interests over the vote blindness of the central leadership. In this context, let me quote Subhash Chakraborty again: "Those who are in responsible positions in the party ... say big things ... but don't take any responsibility."

Whence the second question: what are the implications of this for the CPI (M)? I think they are immense. Basically, this episode will be on a par with what happened to the CPI after the India-China war of 1962. The party split.

It is hard to say just now whether the CPI (M) will split. But I would bet a small amount on it. Should this happen, Dr Manmohan Singh would have emerged as a very clever politician and a most formidable foe.

A flexible party organisational structure and a thoughtful leader will try to be accommodative. The CPI (M) doesn't have either. Faced with such stresses, it is more likely to split than not. It has happened twice before, so why not a third time?

My third question "" whether Karat can think "" stems from two sub-questions: first, how can a leader in his right mind allow his party to appear to be an agent of a foreign country, and second, if you really fancy yourself as a strategist, should you not study the theory first "" or consult someone who knows it, like Asim Dasgupta "" so that you are at least aware of the consequences of your chosen strategy?

The sort of things Karat has done "" or sought to do "" have been analysed by the exponents of game theory long ago. Game theory is the branch of mathematical economics that deals with strategies that adversaries adopt to get what they want. One of these is called, appropriately enough in the current context, the "Grim Trigger" strategy. It is, in simple words, a special case of non-cooperative games.

The key to understanding it lies in a very simple fact: co-operation leaves everyone better off whereas non-cooperation leaves everyone worse off. The problem in one-shot games is that if unilateral deviation from a co-operative strategy is profitable, there is no way of ensuring co-operation "" solitary confinement of prisoners, for example. Or, in the instant case, Karat is fighting for his own survival, rather than some grand principle that makes no sense whatever to any sensible or intellectually honest person.

But if the game can be played repeatedly, as it has ever since the PM laid out his challenge, you can get some sort of co-operation because mechanisms exist for doing that. These mechanisms are called "punishment" strategies, and involve the threat of action if there is non-cooperation.

The most famous of these is the "Grim Trigger" strategy, so called because the trigger comes into operation the moment the other person stops "co-operating" and continues forever. The strategy makes sure that such a player gets decimated. To avoid that, everyone co-operates all the time.

But "" and this is a big but "" the strategies depend for success on the credibility of the threat. The player who uses it has to commit credibly to it totally. If, like Karat, he fails to do so, he is a goner. (Remember Khrushchev and the Cuban missile crisis? Khrushchev's threat was not credible and he lost everything.)

The Karat-UPA game isn't over just yet. Like Stalin, who purged his generals during 1935-37, or Napoleon, who burnt the bridges behind his armies so that they could not retreat, Karat can also go for a scorched earth policy thing because he alone has the power to withdraw support. He could do just that.

But where would that leave him and his party?