Jeevalal Tudu is sipping tea sitting on his sofa. Two bodyguards with machine guns are standing on two sides of the door. Sitting with Tudu are three of this closest counsellors. They are discussing the death of Prof. Rameshwar.

‘Someday it had to happen. Rameshwar had gone too deep into the affairs of the tribals. The Naxals hated him for it. They tortured him mentally. He went off!’ said Tudu

‘He should not have meddled with the coal mining business. That fight with you was totally unnecessary,’ said the first counsellor.

‘See this thing is however much you learn to live with us, you will always be an outsider. Rameshwar was not a tribal. Tribal issues need to be solved by tribal people.’ Said Tudu.

‘True,’ nodded the three.

‘If I wanted, I could have decimated him during that stakeholders meeting. But I respected his age and the work he has done for the tribals.’

‘Yes, you could have taken his ass,’ said the second counsellor.

Tudu takes out his phone from the kurta he is wearing.

‘Nowadays there is this thing called Titter. Everybody is talking on it. I have also made my account. The party high command is encouraging us to post Tits. Come here and have a look.’

The three rose up and stood at the back of the sofa peering into his mobile.

‘This is my account. Look at the picture. Perfect. And I have named it @TuduObama. Obama was the first black president of America. He gives me strength and courage. Now I will post my Tit. The world should know it was the work of Naxals.’

He typed his tweet. @TuduObama: Sad at the death of Prof. Rameshwar. Naxals to be blamed for his suicide. RIP.#twinmurders.

*

Anand Nehru, the president of the People’s party had finished meeting his party members. He was sitting in his living room with his wife and two sons. His wife Suhasini Nehru was his confidant in everything he did. She was astute, clever and always driving him to achieve excellence. He loved her more than anything, even power.

‘Tudu is right. The Naxals led him to do it. And these opposition leaders. They are blaming the mining mafia. I mean why will the mining mafia get into this,’ said Anand.

‘The opposition has an agenda. It does not want India to grow and prosper. The mining companies are working so hard to put India on the growth map. Instead of the appreciation they got ridicule,’ added Suhasini.

‘I talked to Chisti yesterday. He was taken aback by these allegation.’

‘He is a nice man. These opposition leaders have a loud mouth, nothing will come out of it.’

‘There is a battle going on on Twitter. The twin murders are trending.’

‘Why don’t you clarify the situation? Send out a tweet clearing them of it.’

‘I will. How is Vision consultants doing?’

Fine. We have got consultancy contracts for the next iron ore auctions. It should go well. Everything is in place.’

‘Good. I can get you more clients as your success rate improves.’

‘We have a 100% success rate.’

‘I mean when you have greater number of successful projects in your kitty.’

‘Sure,’ said Suhasini,’Now you two. Don’t you have homework?’

The sons rose and walked towards their study room.

‘And you don’t forget to tweet.’

‘I will do it now.’

He typed in his tweet.

@AnandNehru: Useless blame on mining mafia for the deaths when they have been confirmed as suicides. #twinmurders.

*

Rohan read both the tweets. He knew who Anand Nehru was. He searched for Jeevanlal Tudu. Tudu was the MLA of Bokaro in Jharkhand. The two tweets got him thinking. The blame on the mining mafia caught his attention. Who would blame the mining mafia for the murders? He did not see any links. His tea was finished but he wanted one more cup so he rose up to go to the kitchen, put the kettle with water on the gas stove and lit it up while he kept thinking about it. When the water warmed up, he put milk, sugar and tea leaves in it and kept them boiling while his mind was on the mining mafia.

‘Mining mafia and Prof. Dinanath,’ he said to himself with fingers on his lips. ‘There can’t be any connection. What are they talking about? Incompetent people.’ The tea was ready and as he sieved it, he started singing. But in a minute, thoughts of the old professor came into his mind and a cloud of sadness engulfed him. He went back to his table and opened the diary to read an entry.

Date:25 October 2013

Place: Mumbai

The mixed pot of Game Theory

India needed a separate framework to detect collusion in game theory, economically speaking. When I started working on this topic, our logic and empirics were based on the work done in the U.S.A by their economists for their own country which has a starkly different business culture. Indian business model developed and moulded through ages cannot be analysed correctly through them. This is a problem I found out early in my career and set out to solve. Unless you are aware of the basics of business environment in a particular country you won’t be able to understand the ways they collude.

Throughout my journey with game theory there is a hypothesis I have developed. I think evolution has turned women into most astute game theorists. The constant dominance of patriarchy and strategic placements of incentives on the space and time horizon have provided them with an intuitive sense of decision making. I have always believed from my years of research that the best player of the game is the one who can stay in the game, pretend not to understand it and still get their work done. I think women; at least some of them have reached that stage. And they may be getting dangerous for the patriarchs who are oblivious of their incoming doom. Now I can relate why I never had any female doctoral student for game theory. Nobody wants to spill their own deepest secrets. The study of the topic would be a study of their own methods of functioning. Few strategists would want to go very deep into that.

I can’t be very sure why I want to write this. For a long long time, the Indian caste system has been on my mind. I once intended to write a paper on it. The general view among the intellectual class is that the caste system is evil. I agree to this whole heartedly and in many ways I have observed the discriminations all through my life. The caste system though, holds immense opportunities for the game theorist. How can such a thing survive for long without being strategic? And if there was a strategy then who created it?

There are many cultures in our country, intermingling and evolving with each other. In such a dynamic environment an interference which brings along a drastic change can severely affect its development. The nature of interference, especially if predatory will have a negative effect which has been the case with India. Where is the organic development? I teach at a business school. It is symbolic of a mini India sans the poverty. I am from Rajasthan, born into a poor family. I can feel the treachery, the super imposition of alien methods into a cultural pot. They have induced death into organic development, how can equilibrium be attained if there are regular occurrences of disequilibrium due to the interferences. This is what is happening time and again in this country. And who brings the disequilibrium, our very own people. Before the country seems to attain any sort of equilibrium, a chaos is introduced. Look at the history and you will see.

Now I come to my philosophical finding, my holy grail, the result of so many years of work. And what treachery on display, what a master and what a player! It’s a shame that the best player of the game in the world today, I can confidently say after studying so much is the devil. I can only astound in the beauty of its game. I know that it knows, it knows that I know. But it is a monster, a mass murderer, a psychopathic killer. I am all but a professor. Let me introduce you to the entity that is the mastermind of the present disequilibrium of this country, the entity that goes by the name Abideh.

End

It occurred to him after reading the diary entry. Collusion in auctions was a subject Prof. Dinanath had done extensive research on. He had worked on the auctions of mineral resources of India. Could that be the link?

The news of the deaths died down within a few days. Government agencies had already verified it as suicide. Both the learned men had killed themselves, it was said. The reason for their act couldn’t be ascertained. Rohan, unable to get any substantive evidence decided to quit thinking about it. As a final act of giving up, he wrote an email to Lavie asking her if she had come across anything new. He mentioned his doubts about the mining mafia and the papers written by Prof. Dinanath in a line. When no reply arrived back, he assumed that Lavie had left the case too.

His mind now turned to guiding his PhD student Tapan Mohanty whom he had neglected through these times. Tapan was his first PhD student. He had joined the institute as a PhD candidate in the Economics area after an engineering degree from a reputed institute and a two year stint in a consultancy firm. He looked like a typical scholar on his way to learning and preparing for future academic work. He had made an entry into research work last year after completing his courses and was full of enthusiasm to do path breaking work and win the Nobel Prize in Economics.

Tapan was inquisitive and Rohan allowed him to explore his questions as long as they were related to economics. This had probably attracted Tapan to him. Rohan made sure Tapan did not fall into the category of a raw material that had to be turned into a finished product, a line of thinking followed by many advocates of this profession. He treated him like a fellow traveller, in search of answers, much like he was doing himself.