What is a populist policy? Delhi chief minister, Arvind Kejriwal’s latest proposal fits the bill. His announcement on Monday to make metro and bus travel free for women in the national capital, has less to do with women’s safety and more with the impending Delhi assembly elections early next year.
The proposal, to be implemented within the next two to three months, has the Delhi government promising to pick up the tabs for the revenue loss that will accrue to the government on account of this freebie. While there can be no doubt that public transport needs to be made more affordable for everyone, it is important to invest in a robust system first and take steps that will discourage people from using private vehicles.
In other words, instead of such acts of rampant populism, there is a case for big ticket reform in the public transport system, not just in Delhi but around the country, particularly in its overpopulated metros. The current free-travel proposal by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government is a tricky affair as similar experiments in other cities have not quite worked out.
Experts quote the example of the Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation, which provided services at half-rates. The initiative failed to take off as the services were too infrequent. Clearly viability and frequency of services is far more important than the fare. Affordability is important, but that doesn’t always mean free transport.
Experts believe that making travel free is invariably going to come at the cost of quality. To ensure viability, the government can think of congestion pricing as a way of subsidising public transport. The one solution clearly is to discourage the use of private transport and ensure a polluter-pay policy that the government has to plan. That is the only way to reforming transport. But at the end of the day, the economics of public transport will be thrown into the dustbin as money for this subsidy has to come from the taxpayers’ pockets. If anyone requires concessions, it is the senior citizens and the differently abled.
