Why nudges must be explored in

India.
Arvind Kumar,

MA Public Policy, King’s College London




As a student of Behavioural Public Policy, I was introduced to Nudge Theory. Nudge as a concept
was introduced by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein in their book ‘Nudge: Improving Health,
Wealth and Happiness’ in 2008. Nudge Theory sticks to me as I continue to chalk out the
numerous implications for its use in the Indian context. I argue that Libertarian Paternalism may
be a more socially and politically personally acceptable concept in India (I will explain why) than in
countries like the USA and the UK where government interventions, unobtrusive or visible, are met
with skepticism. Because of the wide acceptance of a paternalist government or authority,
improving the e cacy of several policies in India including, road safety, school meals, electricity
consumption among others could be looked at from a behavioural lens. E ective communication
using creative approaches, using social media for messaging and evidence based interventions
can make public policy truly personal for the public.

The Obama Administration established the ‘nudge unit’ known as the Social and Behavioural
Sciences Team to improve the implementation and e ectiveness of federal programs and
operations. The idea adopted by the administration in 2014, draws knowledge from psychology,
behavioural economics and other decision sciences, seeking to alter human behaviour for the
better, sometimes without them realising the change. Since then, nudge units have expanded
globally and produced e ective empirical experiments in various public and private sectors.

The idea behind a nudge goes beyond party politics and is directed towards improving policy
implementation, providing a behavioural lens for policymaking. Governments increasingly nd it
di cult to address common civic challenges on their own, making them dependent on citizen
participation eventually. Money spent and regulations passed, many policies remain on paper,
unable to tackle the problem it was meant to resolve. A key issue today is the lack of research and
public consultation in the policy process. Excessive legislations, regulations and government
spending are proving to be ine ective to bring change to the physical and emotional environment
in public spaces. Several civic issues emerge and sustain as a consequence of ine ective, often
hard policies, weak policy implementation, failing to address the fundamental issue which is
bounded rationality. Mindless government spending and myopic incentives, yet, the quality of life
remains unchanged without any motivation for improvement. This is where nudging and smart,
visual, accessible and feasible communication using behaviour insights can be an interesting case
study for government bodies in India.

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 Behavioural economists believe that stronger policy can be developed by understanding how
peoples biases a ect action and behaviour. Governments who draw on behavioural economics
can adopt a realistic view of human behaviour (The Decision Lab).

Classical economics uses the term ‘Econs’ to describe a rational human, working in his best
interest in every situation, unbothered by in uences of heuristics, personal biases and media
in uences. Behavioural economists, however, argue that humans do not always take rational
decisions that serve their best interest, often making wrong choices without deliberating and
processing all information. Positive and smart government messaging can bring great changes.
We now look at government messaging mostly through an electoral lens alone. In order to
execute an implementation strategy, nudges can be applies in several spheres, transforming
public spaces in our cities and towns.

Governments must attempt to nd ways of involving citizens in the policy process. Braybrooke
and Lindblom (1963) argue that governments can become more intelligent if it is guided by
responding to information, from the citizens. John (2011) suggests that for governments to remain
competitive in a challenging era, they need to use smart and nimble instruments, guided by how
citizens behave and driven by citizen participation. Citizens in representative democracies like
India, USA, UK, New Zealand among others, elect governments to carry on the task of good
governance, the media and public opinion keeping governments under check, and the threat of
re-election forcing governments to act e ectively. If citizens nd a government to be ine ective,
they can vote them out and elect a di erent party. Therefore, the role of local administrators, the
bureaucracy, citizen groups including the press become important to administer public services in
the most e cient and cost e ective way.

Small behavioural changes through subtle nudges can have a large and unexpected, perhaps
long term, positive changes on civic behaviour. The aim of governments should be to use smart
and e ective communication strategies, involving citizens in the process.

Policies of Libertarian Paternalism, as Thaler and Sunstein mention in their book, is neither Liberal
or Conservative, left or right. David Cameron, leader of the Conservative party and Barrack
Obama, a Democrat, have implemented several such policies guided by the principles of
behavioural economics. Libertarian Paternalism can encourage bipartisan policymaking and
implementation in domains such as environmental protection, safer roads, tax returns, inclusive
public spaces among others. However, as the 'paternalistic’ choice architect, governments are
expected to act as responsible actors, knowing what is good for its citizens thereby gaining
legitimacy to intervene in di erent public arenas to improve the quality of services. This does not
mean the elimination of any prior choice. The citizen will still be free to choose whatever they
wish, whether it is smoking, public urination, spitting, unsafe road crossing- they can still do all of
that, but as the paternal actor, the government will steer citizen behaviour towards a safer,
economically sound and healthier lifestyle, through design interventions, visually appealing
campaigns and rearranging the choice architecture.

Legitimate questions have been raised on Libertarian Paternalism by researchers, classical

economists and governments. Hard policies are usually visible and explicit. Nudge, as written in
the book Nudge Nudge, Think Think by Peter John mentions the tenor of nudging as ‘we the
government know better what is good for you than you do and we have found a sneaky way of
you to make the right choice’. It sounds fair if the government is transparent, libertarian and
responsive. Behaviour change, a sensitive topic would require public participation and support so
governments would be expected to maintain high levels of transparency. A nudge can be
perceived as authoritarian if they are not introduced to citizens in a transparent and sensitive way.

To assume that governments would always want the best for its citizens is an arguable case.
Governments may nd it hard to unpick di erent parts of a policy problem, governments might
lack proper evidence to guide its decisions. Governments might only know the right nudges in a
limited number of areas where there is plenty of evidence (Prabhakar, 2010). Government
decisions are often guided by the election cycle- one poll today, another tomorrow a ecting
resource allocation, policy formation and implementation.

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 Interventions have to be made locally, from constituency levels, attempting to build a community
and engage citizens, in a safer and healthier way in their shared public spaces. The complexity of
India’s society will require personalised interventions which will vary from place to place. In
modern democracies, it is hard to expect citizens to oblige to messages from a strong central
authority. Social normative messaging in the Indian context has strong potential to drive change
locally among communities. India, where a sense of community feeling is strong and where
citizens look up to governments to be a paternalistic problem solvers will complement behavioural
research.

An experiment conducted by the Behavioural Insights Team (2013) looked at the area of Legacy
Giving, analysing whether social normative messaging increases donations to a charity or cause.
There were two treatment groups with over 1,000 individuals in each. The treatments were as
follows:

(1) The will-writers asked “Would you like to leave any money to charity in your will?” [Plain ask]

(2) The will-writers asked “Many of our customers like to leave money to charity in their will. Are
there any causes you’re passionate about?” [Social Norm]


The results showed 10.8% of customers in the ‘plain ask’ group included a donation and 15.4%
in the ‘social norm’ group. This compares to 4.9% in the baseline which was a period before the
trial began (BIT, 2013)

The availability of, or the possibilities to acquire data from citizens is vast in India. With the wave
of social media consumption, there is tremendous opportunity for governments to highlight key
points of importance, and make it interesting for the user to consume them. That means,
conducting eld trials is feasible. Moreover, India’s strong decentralisation of civic power is a
boon for behavioural economics study, allowing researchers and practitioners to work locally and
at grassroots levels.

This is a win-win situation for all stakeholders. The government will bene t from its
communication oriented and well researched, economically feasible behavioural interventions.
Citizens feel more in control of their public spaces.
Regular feedback mechanisms in several interventions
have proved to be e ective riders of engagement.
Citizens will win turn bene t from a better, healthier and
wealthier lifestyle.

The MINDSPACE report was published on March 2,

2010, by the Institute for Government and the Cabinet
O ce, UK. Publication of the comprehensive report
resulted in the creation of the Behavioural Insights Team
and popularized the framework of nine robust, non-
coercive in uences on behaviour (The Decision Lab).
MINDSPACE focuses on nine forces of in uence that
drive behaviour in a given context. Supported by eld
and lab experiments, the nine e ects are thought to
have the most signi cant in uence on the automatic
thinking. MINDSPACE stands for - Messenger,
Incentives, Norms, Defaults, Salience, Priming, A ect,
Commitments, and Ego.

MINDSPACE Framework, The Decision Lab

Randomised Control Trials (RCTs) is considered the gold
standard of testing the e ects of an intervention. The trials are
convincing as they o ers counterfactual information of what
would happen without the intervention. These trials are often
conducted in the medical eld to test the impact of drugs. Treatment groups and control groups
provide accurate results of an intervention conducted during a particular time.

Strong evidence based research and experiments with assistance from local authorities, media
and citizens there is an opportunity to transform several policy areas.

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 My key area of focus would be using principles of nudge and design interventions to improve the
public space experience. Indian metros require a robust streetscape design manual, similar to
cities like London. Cost e ective measures can possibly have long term behavioural changes
towards the public space. The guide provides cues to target human heuristics, targeting the
‘System 1’, or our natural, quick and often miscalculated decision making habit. The designs, well
researched, will explain why speci c design nudges could work. For instance, humans are more
receptive to edges and squares having speci c points. Have you wondered why we tend to step
on the centre of oor tiles, avoiding the edges? It is simply because we create a mental boundary,
our instincts informing us to not cross the boundary. Pedestrian crossings in the UK use an
e ective design intervention based on these mental boundaries, requiring pedestrian crossings to
be marked by small square boundary around the edge. This simple intervention, nudging
pedestrians to cross within the boundary has e ective results, despite being a highly cost
e ective measure. Similarly, dynamic pedestrian crossings involving artist groups and targeting
speci c campaigns can evoke a sense of politico-cultural belonging and identi cation.

World Resources Initiative launched the Vision Zero plan in Indian cities with an aim to “..initiate
systematic road design changes, building infrastructure that is safe for all users and formulating
laws and other measures to ensure safe mobility.” However, the interventions are based on
architectural and somewhat hard policy interventions, skimming over the human behavioural
aspect of interactions in public spaces. Using principles of tactical urbanism, organisations in
Pune, Bangalore, Mumbai and Delhi have attempted to reorganise haphazard public spaces, but
only by advancing redesigning interventions in the public space. Most interventions seek to alter
the physical public space but do little to alter behaviours that predisposes human interaction in a
given physical space.

Pune’s administration launched the ‘Walking Happiness Index’ to measure scores given by
pedestrians to 8 streets in Pune. The interventions beautifully transform existing physical spaces
to make them more pedestrian-friendly. According to Pune’s mayor, the annual celebration of
‘Pedestrian Day’ will be instrumental in transforming streets. Though the intervention in the
physical space is good, citizens will require additional nudging to behave safely in public spaces.

There is a greater need to look into irrational human behaviour that leads people to make unsafe
and unhealthy choices. Roads and streets are one of many possible areas that could bene t from
nudging social messaging and citizen involvement to solve basic civic issues. Therefore, where
citizen’s trust the government or if governments can get its citizens to trust them, the possibility to
implement nudges to solve complex problems will have scope.

Behavioural insights are not an alternative to traditional policy making, but complements the
process, adding in uential insights about behavioural science. There are promising possibilities
for governments to use behavioural insights about its citizen, understanding the in uences of
biases and heuristics in uences human decision, complementing the existing policy making
process.

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