Alternate histories: When well-intentioned policies don’t work out

Governments the world over, irrespective of type, initiate action to attain certain outcomes. Ironically, there have been a lot of instances where actions resulted in outcomes which were either not foreseen or intended. These are known as unintended consequences. 

A pertinent instance of an unintended consequence, where a solution proposed to adress a problem actually made things worse, happened in Hanoi, Vietnam during French rule in the early 20th century. A reward scheme was announced for killing rats to control the rodent population of the city. 

To obtain the reward, people would have to bring rat tails to the authorities, after killing them. The French colonial administration which announced this reward scheme probably overlooked a basic principle of economics, which is that people respond to incentives. 

In this case, the more the rat tails one brought, the more the reward one got, leading to a situation where enterprising people began rearing rats, in order to get more money! 

Later, the French officials began noticing rats without tails going about their business in Hanoi. They realised that even though people were catching rats, they just cut off their tails and let them free! The French scrapped the reward scheme when they realised that it was indeed backfiring. 

But the damage was done. The policy only served to increase Hanoi’s rodent population.The ‘Four Pests Campaign’ initiated by Mao Tse-Tung, the Communist leader who ruled China with an iron hand between 1949 and 1976, is a more frightening example. 

The campaign, launched as part of the ‘Great Leap Forward’ from 1958 to 1962, showed that lack of foresight can even cause deaths of millions. 

Mao identified four pests to be eliminated— rats, flies, mosquitoes and sparrows, since they affected agricultural productivity. A sustained campaign was undertaken to eradicate sparrows and even the peasantry was mobilised to kill them. 

A year into the campaign, the Chinese leaders found to their surprise that rice yields substantially decreased. They realised that sparrows not only ate rice grains, but also crop-eating insects. 

The extermination of sparrows upset the ecological balance which enabled crop-eating insects to proliferate. Sufficiently chastened, the omnipotent Mao ordered an end to the campaign to kill sparrows. But by then, the ecological damage was already done. This terrifying result of the ‘Four Pests Campaign’ was one of the factors that led to the ‘Great Chinese Famine’ that resulted in the death of over 15 million people in China. 

A case of unintended consequence, similar to the one in Hanoi has been reported in India. Referred to as the ‘Cobra Effect’, the term owes its origin to an apocryphal story from India during the British rule. The local administration was concerned about the rising number of venomous cobras in the area. 

Subsequently, they announced a reward scheme for killing cobras. Initially, the scheme was deemed successful since the objective of reducing the cobra population was being met, according to the local administration. 

Here as well, people had started rearing cobras in order to get more money! The local government scrapped the reward scheme when they came to know of this. As a result, there was no incentive for the enterprising people to rear cobras any further. 

The cobras were set free into the open, resulting in an increase in the cobra population. 

These incidents serve as a reminder to governments about the need for foresight in implementing policy decisions, and underscore how people actually respond to incentives.

The author is a quizmaster and a scientist at the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, Thiruvananthapuram