Unintended radioactivity

Manmohan Singh is given to weighing with care the consequences of any action that he takes. But even he must be surprised at the latest drift of events, and how close his government has come to losing the support of the majority in the Lok Sabha. His nuclear deal with the US has thus kicked off a series of unintended consequences, not the least of which is his sudden and uncharacteristic aggression. From a defensive parrier of the Opposition's and the Left allies' persistent thrusts, he has become, if you will, a thruster himself. First he dared the Left to withdraw support to his government if it didn't like the nuclear deal. He has now followed that up with a Warne-like googly, that the BJP had conducted havans for his death! The Left has been thrown into confusion and forced to resort to strange metaphors "" "honeymoon over, but marriage still on". To which, two comments might be made. First, do strange bedfellows have honeymoons? Second, some honeymoon! As for George Fernandes...

All this sudden radioactivity is the result of what is called, a little erroneously perhaps, the "law" of unintended (or unforeseen) consequences. The sociologist Robert Merton "" who famously said "no blanket statement categorically affirming or denying the practical feasibility of all social planning is warranted" "" first enunciated it in his 1936 book, The Unanticipated Consequences of Purposive Action. Purposive, Singh has certainly been; and the consequences have been as unanticipated as Professor Merton predicted. What happens in such situations is not hard to understand because it is rooted in the fundamental complexity of the world and the even more inexplicably complex behaviour of people. Merton said there could be four major reasons for unforeseen outcomes "" ignorance, error, short-termism, and self-defeating prophecies.

What about the international scene? Are those four factors in play there as well? Pakistan has already sought China's help in constructing new nuclear power plants, and Beijing is likely to oblige. Also China, sensing a potential Indo-US gang-up, may stiffen its attitude to all Sino-Indian issues, most notably the border negotiations. What about Russia, which has so far had India as a virtually captive customer for its armaments, and which now sees the clear prospect of the US and Israel replacing it? Reports say that it is asking for more money under existing contracts, being difficult about supplying spares for equipment already bought, driving a hard bargain on Sakhalin oil, and so on. In short, alignments in the region might get etched a little more sharply.

Economists tend to refer to such consequences as "externalities", which can be "positive" or "negative". As the classification suggests, a positive externality is when something nice but unforeseen happens; a negative externality is when something unforeseen but nasty happens. Usually, though, the term is used to refer to the latter because people only take notice when bad things happen. Good things are taken for granted. Thus, economic growth and climate change, to cite just one example. Historians, too, have noted the phenomenon because in their case the unintended consequences tend to be very large as well. For example, while everyone smugly thought that all those alliances and cross-alliances between the European powers in the two decades before the First World War would lead to peace, they actually led to the most ghastly war of all times. That was the mother of all unintended consequences. In short, it happens all the time.

The essence of this has been captured in an aphorism widely used in Madhya Pradesh. "Chaubey niklay Chabbay ban-nay, ban kar lautay Dube", translated as, Mr Chaubey (one who knows all four Vedas) set out to show the world he knew six, and as a result returned diminished as Mr Dubey (one who has mastered only two).