were women! Once again very well fitting
into the morning 8 o’clock class analogy! I
was awestruck – one whole train reserved
for women leaving a small general bogey
(mind you, women can get into the gener-
al bogey too!) at the end. I further learned
that the train even had a cheesy name;
‘Matrubhumi Express’ (what if we could
name local trains too!) and I later learnt
that even the last bogey was reserved (in
short, the whole train) until recently!
I felt like someone had just punched me
right in the solar plexus. It was my Gand-
hi-South Africa-Train wala moment. I had
just gotten a hands-on insight! The fact
that I had to sit in a congested compart-
ment did not bother me much. Rather,
until not very long ago, I was happy to
have won my ‘cozy little territory’. What
hit hard was that the rest of the train was
empty – that my compartment was more
congested and hence unfair to me.
Let’s say we have a group of a people
divided equally into two, say group A and
B. Group A is given a sum of 10 lakhs and
is told to share between both of them. But
there’s a catch, Group A is allowed to keep
the share only when the other side accepts
the offer. A 50-50 share would be the best
bargain, wouldn’t it? But if Group A turns
out to be one of the mean and despica-
ble types and decides to give just Rs100 to
the other keeping the rest to itself, would
the other group accept the offer? Imagine
yourself in the situation. We would most
likely reject it straight away!
76
Now, there’s this wonderful experiment
on chimps, (Jensen et al. 2007) where
raisins were distributed in a similar fash-
ion with the very same constraint. A very
strange behavior was observed, known as
homo economicus (which is like the spher-
ical cow of economics :P ). The monkeys
would accept the offer even if it were as
unfair as the one suggested above. The
monkeys were rational maximizers. Mean-
ing, if Group B had accepted their offer of
Rs100, both sides would get to keep their
money. But if Group B had rejected, both
would be worse off.
So accepting an offer howsoever unfair
is always an advantageous solution. In be-
havioural economics, this is known as ‘The
Ultimatum Game’. As it turns out, chimps
know more economics than we do. And
yes, they even happened to think more ra-
tionally than we do. Humans would simply
reject the offer since they’d find it unfair.
To the ape, it did not matter! So, it’s in hu-
mans that this realm of fairness is intro-
duced!
So why did we digress into apes and mi-
croeconomics? Was it because the article
was too passé and was in need of some sci-
entific jargon? Maybe, maybe not. I must
admit, it is real fun to leave an article with-
out a conclusion! So finally, either fair or
unfair, my mother’s happy to see my name
at least down here ;)
P.S. Although there is ongoing debate as to whether
chimps actually are rational maximizers, here is the
original reference.
Jensen, Keith, Josep Call, and Michael Tomasello,
“Chimpanzees Are Rational Maximizers in an Ul-
timatum Ga me,” Science 318, October 2007: 107-
109.
Vasishta Polisetty
3148, Batch of ‘ 14