Need for Behavioural Science in Indian Policy
India is a highly diverse country with a huge caste and class existence. Indians have developed unique beliefs and customs over centuries that are different from most other parts of the world. Since many crucial behavioural patterns in people stem from their belief, culture and customs, it leaves us wondering whether the behavioural economics interventions successfully applied in WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich and Democratic) countries would work in a country like India. Although certain characteristics such as facial expressions, false belief tasks, and underlying patterns of social relationships are similar across various countries, huge differences can be observed in terms of fairness, cooperation, economic decision making, spatial recognition (due to varying languages and culture), visual perceptions, etc.
We will now explore these differences and discuss how we can handle them in an Indian context. Firstly, it is important to differentiate between collectivist societies such as India and individualistic societies such as the United States, Germany or the United Kingdom. Collectivist societies emphasise the needs of groups over individuals while individualistic societies emphasise the rights and concerns of individuals. This inherent characteristic of the society tends to have a significant effect on behaviour and the decisions undertaken by individuals living there.
Let us take the case of social norms. Social norms refer to the shared beliefs of appropriate behaviour in a given situation. They tend to have an intense effect on behaviour as norm violation can often lead to disapproval and shunning from the group. Humans’ affinity to conform to social norms is regarded as universal, while the expression is culturally and socially dependent. In a collectivist society like India, norm compliance is much higher, especially in the rural regions, as certain characteristics such as the fear of being shunned by the society is much higher. It is therefore crucial to understand social norms prevailing in the society as it is possible to change a person’s behaviour just by adjusting their perception of the prevailing social norm.
Here is an example where social norms play a major role — open defecation. The Government of India has dealt with the open defecation problem majorly from an infrastructural point of view by building more toilets. However, despite having access to toilets, people often tend to prefer defecating in the open due to various cultural, religious, social and psychological reasons. The social norm in many rural parts of the country is still to take a long walk in the morning, socialise and defecate in the empty fields. In some regions, toilets are considered unclean, and are therefore placed far away from houses making them less accessible and safe. In some regions where joint families are common, men feel uncomfortable using the same toilets used by the women in their house and vice versa. It is essential to understand these various norms while designing policies as unless there is a shift in these norms, it is going to be difficult to get people to use the toilets they have! It is also important to understand that these social norms vary hyper-locally. Designing decentralised behavioural interventions taking into account the local context is very crucial.
Social proof and herding are phenomenons that push people into conforming and copying others’ behaviour. This is exceptionally high among individuals in collectivist societies leading to greater conformity compared to people from individualistic societies. In India, this is often used in sales and marketing where a higher crowd in a restaurant or a ‘sold-out’ board outside a movie theater is a major quality signal. However, these behavioural features have not been used sufficiently in the policy space. Incorporating these unique features of a collectivist society such as high norm compliance and herding might be the key to implementing better development policies in India.
The economic survey of 2019 batted for the continued incorporation of behavioural science principles and psychological concepts into policymaking. Claims were made that past policies and their implementation had already incorporated various behavioural science approaches, pointing to examples of policies that were actually not designed using the principles of behavioural science. The adoption of behavioural science in the policy space is quite sub-par in India compared to most of the western countries. Given this setting, it becomes necessary to understand and differentiate between what is behavioural science and what is not, and critical to introduce a well-integrated team of behavioural science experts to work alongside policymakers. This will help design policies better using suitable behavioural science principles, matching the behaviourally astute schemes implemented in the more-developed parts of the world.
Entrepreneurs utilise behavioural insights to design and market their products. Politicians influence hordes of people into voting for them. Similarly, behavioural science can very much be impactful when designing policies that seek to change and modify behaviours of thousands and even millions of people. Choices should not be made independent of context, more so in a diversely layered country like India. Behavioural science seeks to understand how these choices are made, and in the process attempts to explain and predict human actions. Only after understanding the context, the social norms, various motivations, beliefs and underlying mechanisms concerning human action can policies designed to impact them be effective.
Written by Junofy Anto Rozarina, the founder and CEO of the India Behavioural Economics Network (IBEN), Simran Odrani, a core team member of IBEN, and Yash Budhwar, a member of the Rethinking Economics India Network. This article was written as a collaboration between IBEN and REIN.
