I'm in Goa. I stop at a roadside stall selling what, in Calcutta, where I spent most of my life, are called daabs, and in peninsular India are called tender coconuts. So, I buy a tender coconut and drink its water, refreshingly sweet like Goa's rain-lush landscape.

'That'll be ₹70 only,' says the vendor.

'What's 'only' about ₹70? Everywhere else it's ₹60 only,' I respond.

The vendor of tender coconuts nods his head in energetic negation. '70 only,' he reiterates.

'Why 70 only? It should be 60 only,' I reply, lapsing into the locution of the lingua franca.

'₹60 only for Karnataka coconut. This is Goan coconut. Goan coconut ₹70 only,' declares the tender coconut vendor.

As I duly tender ₹70 - only - I ponder over the roots of this Goan offshoot of Freakonomics. Why should a Goan coconut, tender or otherwise, grown, harvested, and sold in Goa, cost more than a coconut grown, harvested, and transported from Karnataka? Considering just the cost of transportation, shouldn't it be the other way around: Goan coconut for ₹60 only and the Karnataka migrant sold for ₹70 only?

Could the higher price for the Goan coconut compared to the Karnataka variant be a form of regional one-upmanship, which, by placing a higher price tag on the local product, seeks to impart elitist value to it, as a genuflection to parochial pride and prejudice?

Or could the ₹10 premium on Goan coconuts be an add-on to ensure an unofficial MSP for Goan coconut farmers? But wouldn't such a backdoor MSP be an impost - a tariff imposed not on imports but on homegrown produce - resulting in a higher cost that gets passed on to the consumer?

In a price-sensitive market, with inelastic demand for coconuts, this could create an oversupply issue. Coconut growers with '₹70 only' unsold coconuts languishing in silos, provided by Gomantak Coconut Growers Association (GCGA), much to the gratification of ravenous rodents and other voracious vermin, would cut down on supplies.

This, in turn, would have the consequence, unintended or otherwise, of increasing the price differential between Karnataka imports and indigenous produce from ₹10 only to ₹20 only, with Goan coconuts retailing for ₹80 only instead of ₹70 only, to obtain the same ROI on a decreased volume of sales.

The price increase of Goan coconuts would act as a stimulus to the Karnataka version of GCGA, KCGA (Karnataka Coconut Growers Association), to double its export of coconuts to Goa by virtue of economies of scale. This would further bring down the Goan price of Karnataka coconuts to ₹50 only, setting up a dual ascending and descending price spiral resembling the double helix of the DNA molecule.

Such backside mercantilism - or, reverse autarkism - which promotes imports while curtailing domestic production, could eventually lead to a negative price level whereby Karnataka coconuts in Goa are not just given away free, but customers are paid for consuming them, while Goan coconuts in Goa become literally priceless, non-negotiable instruments safely kept behind glass in museums of natural history, ultimate sanctuaries of paradoxical protectionism.

In Joseph Heller's 1961 satirical war novel, Catch-22, the father of Major Major Major Major (the character who was 'born too late and too mediocre') epitomises the pinnacle of protectionism: 'His speciality was not growing alfalfa... the government paid him well for every bushel he did not grow. The more alfalfa he did not grow, the more money the government gave him, and he spent every penny he didn't earn on new land to increase the amount of alfalfa he did not produce...'

Replace alfalfa with Goan coconuts, and you get not Catch-22, but Catch-44. And to think it all began with my shelling out 70 - only - for a Goan coconut.