Explanation: There's a common story that during British rule of India, some local Brit officials got the bright idea to reduce the (legitimately deadly) cobra population. Of course, they wouldn't do it themselves - that would be dangerous! Rather, they decided to pay a bounty to people for each dead cobra turned in! Why didn't Indians just think of this before?
... after some time of paying out bounties but cobra attacks not dropping, it came to the Brits' attention that people were just farming cobras and turning them in. Thus, the bounty was rescinded... and the farmed cobras, no longer useful, released... causing cobra attacks to go up.
This is often cited as a classic example of 'perverse incentives' in economics - when the trigger for an economic incentive can be easily taken advantage of in a counterproductive way.
