"The premise of this theory lies in the “not so rational“ behaviour of human beings. It is due to this that human beings need a ‘poke’, ‘an encouragement’ a ‘nudge’ to do things which are in their best interest." With the rise of behavioural economics, a number of unconventional concepts have emerged which are intriguing and worthy of further research. One such concept and theory which has garnered popularity in recent times is  the Nudge Theory.
 
The theory emerged in 2008 and was popularised by the book “Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness”, written by the American academics Richard H Thaler and Cass R Sunstein. Richard Thaler is known as the father of “nudge theory” and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for the same in 2017.
Nudge Theory is a concept which primarily aims to understand how people think, behave and make decisions. It helps people to manage change of all sorts, identifying the unhelpful influences on them and thus even helping them to make in improving their decision making skills. The premise of this theory lies in the “not so rational “ behaviour of human beings. It is due to this that human beings need a ‘poke’, ‘an encouragement’ a ‘nudge’ to do things which are in their best interest. 
Thaler, in his book, wrote “By knowing how people think, we can make it easier for them to choose what is best for them, their families and society,”. This in a nutshell gives the true essence of this theory and further leads us to explore the vast implications of this powerful conceptual tool.
 
Nudge Theory has vast implications in policy making ,consumer behaviour and bringing about desirable social and economic change in the society at large.
A well known example of application of this theory is the UK Pension Policy which was rolled out in 2012. The aim of the policy was to increase saving rates among private sectors.To achieve this, the Government started an “automatic enrolment” scheme, wherein, the workers would be automatically be placed in the firm’s scheme and a sum would automatically be deducted from their monthly pay unless they requested to opt out of it. Nudge in this example can be seen in the form of automatic enrolment of workers as otherwise they considered it cumbersome to put aside a sum for their retirement. The default setting proved to be successful as there was a huge leap in the membership of private sector pension scheme from 2.7 to 7.7 million in 2016.
 
Another well known example is the organ donation opt out system in Spain where all citizens are automatically registered to donate their organs. They can opt out of the same if they so desire. This policy has made Spain a leader in organ donation.
 
It is interesting to note how in India too, behavioural economics has had a significant  influence in policy making. Well known government schemes like Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao, Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan, Jan Dhan Yojana have employed insights from this realm and have met with great success. Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao (BBBP) and the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) are cases in point where the power of the “social norm” has played a pivotal role in influencing people and changing their actions as well as their attitudes.
 
SBM which was launched by the NDA government on 2nd October, 2014  had the impact of increasing household access to toilets to nearly 100% in all states. A major reason of this astounding success goes to behavioural economics. The date on which it was launched had an important role to play in the effective application of this scheme. Gandhi Jayanti was used to leverage the values advocated by Gandhi and create a mass movement on  lines of “satyagrah” for a cleaner India. The symbols used during the movement were also especially designed to invoke his ideology and indeed helped in mobilizing majority of the population. The similarities of this movement with Satyagarh in terms of having a “Swachhagrahi” ( a local for every community designated to spread the message) expanded the reach of this program to the local pockets of India. The fact that people are more likely to listen to someone they know and emulate him was put into action here as the swachhagrahi was a generally a well known person of the area concerned.The scheme also relied on  community based approaches to sanitation as the fear of community scorn or the desire to just fit into the general populace also moulds the behaviour of people and in this case resulted in realising a desirable social change. The behavioural insight that people internalise messages better which make them feel a certain way was employed in this scheme. Attaching disgust to the idea of defecating openly had a better result than just spreading awareness about hygiene.
 
Similarly, interesting behavioural insights were also played in BBBP which was launched in 2015. BBBP saw the effective use of “social norm”. The aim of the program was to celebrate girl child and make it the “norm”. Initiatives within this scheme like “Selfie with Daughter” helped in achieving this goal as parents all over the country started to post pictures with their daughters which accelerated the speed of this social change.Started by one proud father in Haryana, the #SelfieWithDaughter soon  became a trend. 
Two behavioural  elements of the campaign - firstly,telling the people what the norm was and secondly, showing how thousands are following this norm made the campaign what it was. The strategy involved here was “failure bias” which refers to the tendency to focus on failures rather than on successes as failures are more visible. Since failures generally get the spotlight, people think that failing is the norm or that it is more prevalent. In the context of BBBP, the focus was thus on the people who treated their girls fairly. This corrected the failure bias and made the social norm of treatment of girls unequivocally clear. 
 
 Seeing the enormous aspects of this concept, many governments have started to employ “nudge units” to develop policies. It was first started by Obama when he employed Sunstein as an advisor and urged US government departments to adopt behavioural economics concepts for maximisation of policy results.
 
Apart from these distinct implications of nudge theory, there are numerous daily life applications. A few examples being - displaying peer reviews when buying a product as this influences the buying decision of the consumer, discouraging unhealthy eating habits by displaying boldly the calorie counts on the packaging or “upselling” in restaurants which means waiters offer extra items to go with the meals or turn individual food items into lucrative meal offers and always mailing sure that the customer falls into the trap although at times the customer doesn’t want to buy the add ons.
 
Thus, through these examples listed above we come to see the possibilities that this branch of behavioural studies has opened. This also goes on to show how much more  is left to be discovered and how human beings are always driven by the urge to maximise their interests and well being.