The outcome of the BJP-Shiv Sena battle depends on Uddhav Thackeray's ego

BJP and Shiv Sena are engaged in a game of Grim Trigger strategy in the state now

What the Shiv Sena is doing in Maharashtra is called the Grim Trigger strategy in game theory. It’s a branch of economics developed 60 years ago to analyse how adversaries strategise to gain at the other player’s expense.

The strategy was tried in 2008 by the CPI(M) with its senior partner, the Congress, over the nuclear deal. It lost. The Congress won the 2009 election. The CPI(M) and it’s boss, Prakash Karat, went into oblivion.

Basically the game consists of two players and there are no exits. It is a special case of non-cooperative strategy in which co-operation will leave everyone better off and non-cooperation will leave everyone worse off. But in the extreme form you get only one chance to play it.

The problem arises when a unilateral deviation from a co-operative strategy is seen as being so profitable that there is no way of ensuring co-operation. It becomes a fight unto death. The Kashmiri separatists played it and have lost forever.

As Aakar Patel has pointed out in this newspaper, the Shiv Sena is fighting for survival. Over the last decade the BJP, as he puts it, “has eaten the Sena’s lunch”. It is now the senior partner in the state. Until just five years ago it was the junior.

Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray at an election rally | Photo: PTI

But, as Manmohan Singh showed with Prakash Karat in 2008 and as Amit Shah is now showing with Uddhav Thackeray, if the game is played repeatedly, 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 continuing non-cooperation.

They are deadly for the player who first pulls the trigger. After this the play continues forever and the strategy makes sure that the player who deviated gets decimated.

The key to the success of such a strategy lies in the credibility of the threat, and clearly the Sena thinks it’s threat is credible. The player who uses it has to commit credibly to it totally. There is no halfway house.

The player who fails to show that his or her threat is credible is a goner. Remember Khrushchev and the Cuban missile crisis? Khrushchev's threat was not credible and he lost everything. From that point on no one took the USSR completely seriously. The same thing has happened to the CPI (M).

This is the problem that now confronts the Sena. Having made the threat, it must now show that it’s committed to the strategy of not giving in and that its threat is credible.

That is why Sanjay Raut went to call on Sharad Pawar. The Sena was trying to show that it means business.

In Maharashtra, there is an additional complication. There are two hecklers who can force the deviating player to make a mistake. They are the NCP and the Congress.

I think this is what we are witnessing now — a player who is being encouraged to pull the trigger by hecklers who have no stake in the play.

So just as in 2008 it came down to Karat’s ego, now also everything depends on Uddhav Thackeray’s ego.

Twitter: @tca_tca