Last week Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal was fined ₹25,000 by the Gujarat High Court for asking to see the post graduate degree of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. A little later he made a scathing attack on Modi, taking care to do it inside the State Assembly where he has immunity.

A few days ago there was a YouTube discussion by some usually very well informed Hindi language journalists on what he was up to. Various theories were put forward. None got beyond the usual drawing room level analysis.

Actually, the correct way to look at the BJP, the Congress and the AAP is via what’s called the Three Body Problem. It can be applied to all situations where there are three competitors.

There is something about the number three that makes it unique. The number appears to have certain intrinsic mathematical properties which has made it useful to societies over the centuries. But it is also an inherently destabilising number in many ways because it prevents balance and equilibrium.

Thus, in physics we have Leonhard Euler, an 18th century German mathematician, asking what would happen to the motion of a particle when the gravitational fields of two other bodies that are fixed in space exert influence on it.

Like, one could say, the Congress, the BJP and AAP where the Congress, and the BJP are the fixed bodies and AAP is the free floating particle. Euler said if the particle got too close to the others it could wobble off its trajectory.

This explains AAP’s political strategies and tactics perfectly. It constantly performs all sorts of tricks that change what in physics is called ‘angular momentum’. In other words, it is unpredictable at all times.

But this sort of behaviour in the presence of three competitors can be seen in economics also. This was posed as the ‘Ice-cream Vendor Problem’ by Harold Hotelling, a much admired economist. How, he asked, will two ice-cream vendors position themselves on a long beach so that each can maximise his sales?

Converging to the centre

Both, he said, would converge to the centre and not, as many would say, remain at the two ends of the beach. Being at the centre was the most efficient solution. Being equidistant from the centre also didn’t work.

You can see this phenomenon in the Congress and BJP economic manifestos. On economic issues they have always converged. That’s what had led to a high degree of stability.

But what if a third ice-cream vendor like the AAP turns up, promising free ice cream? Would the three of them settle anywhere at all then?

Hotelling said they wouldn’t because even very little shifts in position — like a five per cent discount — could fetch a few more customers or voters.

Thus, for very little effort, large short-term rewards can be garnered at the cost of stability, especially when the median consumer or voter places zero premium on loyalty.

But it’s not just in economics and physics that we see this ‘three body’ thing. We can see this in culture, too. Thus the Christians have their Holy Trinity, the Hindus have Brahma, Shiva and Vishnu, and there are the three jewels of Buddhism. Islam is the exception and it doesn’t have it.

And, of course, there’s romance where everyone knows that the presence of a third party leads to instability. We have seen this in any number of novels, plays and films.

That said about how three causes instability, it’s possible to see what Kejriwal is faced with. He is a latecomer to the beach and needs to decide where to put his ice cream cart. So far he has been shuffling around with considerable success in Delhi and Punjab by taking large bites out of the Congress vote.

Changing context

But after Rahul Gandhi’s disqualification as an MP, the Congress has moved its cart, forcing him to rethink his positioning. That’s why after having refrained from attacking Modi directly for several years, he has started doing it again. It’s worth noting in this context that this has never paid off in the past. Modi’s political standing has remained unaffected.

In the southern States, however, the Modi name doesn’t have the same resonance. It is the BJP that is the newcomer there and it is struggling with the positioning problem.

In the North it offers Hinduism on the cultural menu, Hindutva on the political menu and Hindi on the chauvinist menu. But in the South it can’t offer Hindi.

That has left it with a smaller menu which means it has to shuffle about on the political beach as much as AAP shuffles about in the North. This is very visible in Karnataka. We will see the results of this in mid-May.

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