By Sara Martin
On the night of May 18th, a 17-year-old boy went to a pub named Koji in Koregaon Park, Pune, with his friends to celebrate his Class 12 results. The boy’s grandfather had given him a credit card to cover the expenses of the party. They arrived at the pub around 10:30 PM, where they ordered food and drinks. In Maharashtra, the legal drinking age is 25, but the 17-year-old was served alcohol. Within minutes, his bill amounted to Rs 8000. After this, they moved to another pub, Merit Sweets. Normally, only members are allowed entry to Merit Sweets, but the group was granted access and served alcohol until 2 AM.
Later, everyone decided to go home, but the 17-year-old boy insisted on driving himself. He began driving his posh, unregistered car that didn’t have a license plate. Around the same time, a 24-year-old man, Anish Avadhyana Koshta, and his colleague, Ashwini, were heading home on a motorbike after dinner in Kalyani Nagar, Pune. Anish worked as a business analyst, and Ashwini was an IT analyst at Johnson Controls Company.
The 17-year-old, driving at 150 km per hour, collided with Anish’s motorbike on Kalyani Nagar Road, a crowded area. The crash resulted in the immediate deaths of Anish and Ashwini. Despite attempts by bystanders to take them to the hospital and to restrain the boy, it was too late. The boy, under the influence of alcohol, had caused the fatal accident.
The Juvenile Justice Board later granted bail to the boy with several conditions. The punishment handed to him was to write a 300-word essay, which caused public outrage. After media coverage, the boy’s father claimed that the family driver had been driving, but this was contradicted by the driver’s own confession at the police station.
This incident highlights how predictable and inadequate the response to such events can be. There is often a public outcry for punishment only when an incident gains media attention, but the underlying issues remain unaddressed, leading to repeated tragedies.
After the Pune accident, it became evident that the law treats the rich and powerful differently. Around 7 PM, crime reporters noticed unusual activity outside the Yerwada police station in Pune. The posh car involved in the accident was there, and the 17-year-old boy was seen sitting in the ACP’s chair, despite the ACP’s absence. This inappropriate treatment led to reprimands from the ACP upon her arrival.
The victims’ friends were detained by the Pune police and only released after the boy received bail. The police were criticized for treating the victims’ families poorly, not allowing them inside the police station, and instead, defending the boy’s actions.
A significant twist occurred when local MLA Sunil Tingre arrived at the police station an hour after the accident. He claimed he was there as a responsible public representative but later admitted to knowing the boy’s family for 30 years. Despite promising not to interfere in the investigation, his presence raised questions about the influence of powerful connections in the case.
The next day, on the afternoon of May 19th, the boy was presented to the Juvenile Justice Board in Yerwada, Pune. However, the Pune police did not follow protocol, failing to conduct a blood test or personal appearance test to determine if the boy had consumed alcohol until eight hours after the incident.
In the personal appearance test, it is seen whether his behavior shows evidence of alcohol consumption or not. Can he walk properly? Is the smell of alcohol coming from his body? But since this test was not conducted for 8 hours, there was no evidence of alcohol concentration left.
Regarding the blood test, there was a twist. In 1999, around 11:00 AM, the boy’s blood samples were sent to Sassoon Hospital. However, the Pune Police Commissioner said that the boy’s blood samples were thrown in the dustbin at the hospital. Instead, blood samples of another man were used to show that the boy did not drink alcohol. Preliminary tests revealed that the juvenile’s sample had been discarded and replaced with another person’s sample. The name of the juvenile accused was written on the substituted sample and sent to the forensic lab. The Commissioner stated that the Chief Medical Officer of the hospital switched these blood samples.
Another major revelation was that the minor accused’s mother gave her blood sample for tampering with the blood report. The involved doctors have been arrested, but the Juvenile Justice Board still granted bail to the boy. The boy was told to get help for his drinking problem, receive counseling, and consult a psychiatrist. When these details were released through the media on May 19, many people were outraged at how the boy got bail so soon after killing two people. Locals in Kalyani Nagar, Pune, where the incident took place, held a candlelight march.
As the incident gained national attention, on May 20, Pune police registered a second FIR against Vishal Aggarwal, the boy’s father, under the Motor Vehicle Act for allowing an underage boy to drive. Action was also taken against the owners and managers of the bars that served alcohol to the minors. However, on the same day, Vishal Agarwal went missing from Pune. Due to public pressure, Pune police sought court permission to try the boy as an adult.
On May 21, Pune police arrested Vishal from Aurangabad and brought him back to Pune. The Sessions Court then asked the Pune Police to approach the Juvenile Justice Board to seek permission to try the boy as an adult. The Pune Police filed a second FIR, stating that the boy had committed a very serious crime, which would allow him to be tried as an adult.
The Deputy Chief Minister of Maharashtra held a press conference at the Pune Police Commissioner’s office, stating that the police would explore all legal avenues until justice is served. However, he did not address why the boy was not initially arrested for a serious crime, nor did he explain why their MLA visited the police station at 3:00 AM.
On May 22, some developments occurred. The Juvenile Justice Board canceled the boy’s bail and sent him to a remand home, a place where criminals below 18 years of age are detained. The court also ordered that Vishal Agarwal be kept in police custody until May 24.
Meanwhile, the victim’s family faced further complications. The driver filed a case against the boy’s father and grandfather, alleging that they took his phone and locked him in a room for a day. The driver was released only after his wife intervened. This complaint added another layer to the case, implicating the boy’s grandfather as well.
There are two main issues in this case. The first is the crimes of underage drinking, drunk driving, and overspeeding. The second is the attempt by a wealthy family to manipulate the legal system in their favor. It is crucial to understand the incentives at play in the system to fully grasp the situation. As famous investor Charlie Munger said, “Show me the incentive, I’ll show you the outcome.” Incentives determine behavior in each scenario, and understanding these incentives is vital because our reactions have become very predictable after such incidents, leading to public outrage that seeks to change the situation.
As long as this outrage continues, our governance system tries to solve that case with all its resources to satisfy the public. When this public outrage ends, these resources go back to normal. If used properly, an outcome changes due to public outrage, but the incentives in the system that decide how people will behave do not change, due to which the outcome remains the same in all other cases.
This was seen in the Nirbhaya case of 2012 and the Hyderabad rape case of 2019. Due to the anger of the people, convicts were hanged in the Nirbhaya case, and the accused were encountered in the Hyderabad case. But the incentives were not changed at the ground level. Until we change these incentives, we will not be able to solve the problems.
For example, I recently made a video on why Indian cities are so dirty. If you think from first principle thinking, the reason behind it is vote bank politics. Many countries became democratic and some were very rich. But India was an exception; after being formed, when we were poor, our leaders decided that we would become democratic at the time of independence, so our country had fewer resources.
The electoral system we adopted was the first-past-the-post system. This means that if a leader gets only 30-40% of the votes, he can still win the seat. So now we understand the incentives of the leader. There are fewer resources in the country, and there is a first-past-the-post system for winning the election. The leader now has two options: use the limited resources for the benefit of everyone, or take all those resources and give them to one group so that they benefit a lot. This is vote bank politics.
That’s why Kartik Muraleedharan wrote in his book that political leaders do not invest in public goods, like building roads, keeping the city clean, or building schools, because it benefits everyone. Political leaders are actually very logical. We are the fools who expect different outcomes with these same incentives. Unless the incentives change, how will the outcome change?
This video is not about the cleanliness of the city, it is about the Pune accident. Let’s understand what the incentives were in the Pune accident, and then we will be able to understand what the solution to the problem is.
In the Pune case, the boy committed many crimes like underage drinking, drunk driving, and overspeeding on a busy road. We focus on drunk driving and overspeeding because road safety in India is a major issue. Many accidents happen in India because people do not know the rules. For example, the rule of right of way: the oncoming vehicle has the first right on the road, and only when that vehicle passes should another vehicle make a U-turn.
In 2021, a survey showed that out of 95 car drivers who have a valid license, 50 do not even have awareness about traffic safety rules. This lack of awareness is due to how licenses are given in the country. A survey conducted in 2017 in 10 cities of India showed that 60% of people who have a driving license did not give any test.
The 17-year-old boy driving at 150 kmph on a road after drinking alcohol did not have a problem with awareness. He knew what he was doing. Another influencer has become very popular recently for driving his car at high speeds in Delhi NCR. This influencer is popular among many creators because they also get views from him.
There is no problem with awareness; these people know that what they are doing is against the rules, but according to them, what they are doing is absolutely logical. They perform a cost-benefit analysis, and their conclusion is that overspeeding is logical.
There are two parts to this equation: benefits and costs. The benefits are of three types. The first is faster travel time. This is why people drive on the wrong side or reverse on the highway. They feel as if they have missed a turn. This is logical in their mind with the concept of game theory called the Prisoner’s Dilemma.
The Prisoner’s Dilemma is a very important concept that can be applied in many places in life. Imagine that two people, Rahul and Raj, have been arrested for a crime and both have been told in separate cells that they cannot communicate with each other. The police officer gives a deal to each prisoner: if one prisoner confesses and the other remains silent, the one who confesses will get relief, but the one who remains silent will have to spend 5 years in jail. If both prisoners confess, they both will have to stay in jail for 2 years.
If both remain silent, then both of them will have to spend only one year in jail. So now think from Rahul’s perspective. If Raj decides that he will remain silent, it is better for Rahul to confess. And if Raj decides that he will confess, it is also better for Rahul to confess. Therefore, it is a better strategy for Rahul to confess every time. The same logic applies to Raj as well. So, what do both of them do? Both of them confess. When both of them confess, they each get two years in jail. However, if both had remained silent, they would have only gotten one year each. This is the Prisoner’s Dilemma, which also applies on Indian roads.
Everyone would be better off if everyone followed the rules. But in a system where everyone is following the rules, you only benefit if you break the rules. According to this logic, you break the rules, and others break the rules too, resulting in a worse outcome for everyone and a chaotic system. In such an environment, when someone else is breaking the signal and someone else is driving recklessly, the logical reaction is to break the signal and drive recklessly yourself. However, this worsens the end result for everyone.
The second benefit is psychological. When people break the rules, they don’t just feel guilty. Researchers at the University of Washington and Harvard University have shown that after breaking a rule, many people feel smarter and their mood improves. Another 2011 study showed that people feel powerful after breaking a rule.
Now that was about the benefits. Let’s move on to the cost. Cost is also of two types. The first cost is the punishment, which is like the likelihood of getting caught multiplied by the punishment you will get once you are caught breaking the rules. The second part is about the accident, like the chances of getting into an accident multiplied by the consequences of an accident.
People who break the rules feel that the chances of getting into an accident are very low because they have a sense of over-optimism. For example, in 2017 it was reported that four two-wheeler drivers die every hour in road accidents due to not wearing helmets. However, people feel that accidents won’t happen to them, so they don’t wear helmets. This was also seen in an online poll in 2022 where Indians were asked why they don’t prioritize their safety, and they said that accidents happen to others, not to them.
Let’s look at the punishment part. Those who break the rules correctly believe that the probability of being caught by law enforcement, i.e., the police, is very low because this is the truth. Government data from 2023 showed that there are around 85,000 police personnel on traffic duty, and there are about 21 crore two-wheelers and 7 crore four-wheelers in the country. This means there is one traffic police officer for every 3,300 vehicles. Traffic expert M.N. Sreehari has said that this number should be one traffic police officer for every 1,000 vehicles. Because of this, the likelihood of getting caught is very low, and people take advantage of this.
Many of us think that there are too many government employees in our country, but in fact, Kartik Muralidharan wrote in his book that when you compare with other countries, there are very few government employees in our country. We need more government doctors, policemen, and diplomats. There is a huge irony in our country where there is so much unemployment and so much madness for government jobs, but we do not have enough government employees.
Those who break traffic rules think this equation in their mind and conclude that the benefit is more than the cost, and hence it is logical for them to break the rules. So, a first principles approach has been taken to the problem. Now to understand how we can solve this, the first thing is that we have to increase the cost. How can we increase the cost? The best way is to increase the likelihood of getting caught.
Unfortunately, most of our focus is on severe punishment, which I have talked about in this video. But increasing punishment to stop a crime is not that effective.
More effective is increasing the probability of getting caught, i.e., improving law enforcement. To do this, we will have to hire more traffic policemen and train them. Investment will have to be made in electronic monitoring to make their work easier. The person who is driving in the wrong lane knows they are breaking the rules, which is why such people keep uploading many stories where they are breaking the rules regularly. The logic is that the benefit—more followers, feeling more powerful, and getting invited by creators like Samay Raina and Lakshya Chaudhary—is greater than the cost. If we want to improve road safety, we need to increase this cost in people’s calculations.
To increase these costs, we can add one more element: social norms. For example, watch this video: a car jumps the red light, and then other people also start doing such things. There is a norm in our public that if one person breaks a rule, everyone will start breaking the rules. However, this behavior can be changed through influence, which can change our public norms. In Singapore, if you break any traffic rule, it’s not always the police who will catch you, but rather the person next to you will definitely show you their disapproval, which reduces your social status. This creates a social norm, and if such a norm is created, another cost will be added to people’s equations: “Why should I have to deal with others’ disapproval? I will not break the rules.”
Unfortunately, many people have a defeatist attitude, believing that we are Indians and inherently inclined to break rules.
Now, there is a way by which you might feel superior, but the problem will not be solved. In this video, I wanted to use a first principles approach to understand people’s incentives so that we can change those incentives and adopt a solution-oriented approach.
Now we know why our legal system favors rich people. The first reason is that in our politics, it is in the interest of any politician to favor rich people. This is because of political financing. In my video on Washing Machine and Electoral Bond, I showed how expensive elections in our country are becoming. This is why the Finance Minister of our country even said that she cannot contest elections because she does not have that kind of money. In such a situation, politicians will work for those who fund their campaigns.
This may be the reason why the MLA in Pune came to the police station at 3 o’clock in the night, just a few hours after the accident. When politicians start helping the accused, the police also have limited recourse because they have to listen to the politicians. The state government decides the transfers of police officers, meaning the police will do whatever the state government wants, lacking independence.
Rich people influence politicians, who in turn influence the police. Prakash Singh, former DGP of UP and Assam Police, filed a PIL in the Supreme Court in 1996 for police reforms. After 10 years, in September 2006, the Supreme Court announced a landmark judgment advocating for many police reforms. One key reform was that transfers of police officers should be decided by a board named the Police Establishment Board, composed of senior police officers and bureaucrats, not politicians. However, a report in September 2020 showed that not a single state has fully implemented these reforms. If we want the police to do their job effectively, they must be independent of the state government. This will only happen if the Supreme Court enforces its ruling since no state government will willingly reduce its power.
After the incident, the Maharashtra government has taken many actions, but they have not changed the system’s incentives. They have diverted many government resources to solve one case, but this approach only addresses that single case. If we want to solve more cases, we need to change the mindset that nothing can be done in India. Instead, we must change the system’s incentives.
We should demand that traffic laws be better enforced by hiring and training more traffic personnel and using electronic monitoring. We should demand transparent political financing to reduce undue influence. Additionally, we should demand the independence of the police from political interference. When the system’s incentives change, the outcomes in the country will also change.
