🔊 Listen to this article

There has been a flurry of responses, both in favour and against, ever since the Delhi government proposed to make the fares for Delhi Metro, Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) buses and cluster buses “voluntary” for women. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)-led Delhi government’s proposal seeks to encourage more women commuters to use public transport and make Delhi’s public transport safer for women. The proposal on Delhi Metro has since been scuttled owing to opposition from the Centre which has equal stakes in the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC).

Undoubtedly, making public transport free for women in Delhi will have an incremental effect on women’s mobility and sense of safety. However, equally convincing are the  “Metro Man” E Sreedharan’s reservations towards this move, since a large-scale financial mismanagement in the already-complex accounting systems of the Delhi Metro is likely to adversely affect the debt-burdened corporation’s financial and operational sustainability and viability.

Unfortunately, neither the critics of the Delhi government’s proposal nor the Delhi government itself seem to be taking a holistic view that helps us move beyond this double bind. The AAP is not utilising what could have been an opportune moment to rethink and reimagine transport equity and mobility justice from the point of view of not only women, but all marginalised groups in the city.

Transport justice in a city of the Global South has to address the twin demons of an ever-increasing car culture and a debt-financed model of building capital-intensive infrastructure that serves the interests of multilateral financial institutions, such as the Japan International Cooperation Agency in the case of the Delhi Metro.

Instead of questioning worn out assumptions that frame “public transport,” the AAP government is holding on to a proposal that seems unsustainable even in the short term, and is uncritically assuming the celebratory narratives associated with the Delhi Metro.

Is the Metro Public?

 There is an emerging and powerful critique that suggests that the metro in Delhi was never a social good, but rather was always pegged as a prestige project. Anthropologist Rashmi Sadana, who has been studying the Delhi Metro for close to a decade, argues that the Delhi Metro was always “inherently ‘anti-people’” since this top-down infrastructure had little or no connection with the messiness of urban transport and social networks on the ground. Unlike what we popularly believe, the Delhi Metro was not built with “public purpose” in mind. Surely, it is more public than the malls and gated communities that dot the new urban landscapes of India, but in its fine print, its separation from the public was writ large over its planning, implementation and functioning. Her research has revealed that one of the reasons for the Metro’s “success” has been its ability to keep Delhi’s other urban and transport agencies at bay.

In fact, the Delhi Metro’s exclusive character has always been used to justify its separation from questions of social justice. In response to a question by the 4th Fare Fixation Committee on why it does not provide free passes to the elderly like the DTC buses, the Delhi Metro said that it is a different system and cannot be compared to Delhi’s buses^[1]. It is precisely because of its inherently self-manufactured “exclusive” character that it is difficult to inject elements of social justice in its operations.

Consider this - the Delhi government will probably have to bear Rs 800 crore for the initial subsidy to the Delhi Metro to start the proposed scheme. Notwithstanding whether it would be possible for the AAP government to use Delhi’s Consolidated Fund without the central government’s approval, earmarking this subsidy will prove to be a challenge for AAP now and, for future Delhi governments later. Experts believe that, given the debt-financed model of the Delhi Metro, periodic fare hikes are logical, whether the Metro-using public like it or not. It is also true that these fare hikes will occur with increasing regularity. Although the Delhi Metro shows an “operating profit” on its account books, it has been making losses if we look at its balance sheet through the globally-recognised farebox recovery ratio for urban transport systems (ibid.). Given this situation, fares and expenses are also going to increase because capital-intensive and technologically complex metro systems incur huge maintenance costs as they age. Even as the Delhi Metro exploits alternate revenue sources, its self-sustainability will always be a question. As fares increase, subsequent governments will have to step in to increase its own share of the subsidy, if the Delhi government’s proposal goes through.

Give way to Buses

It is somewhat paradoxical that a government that seems so invested to encourage women to step out into public spaces, and ensure their unlimited participation in urban life, was also one of the harshest critics of the now-scrapped 14.5 km Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS) from Ambedkar Nagar to Delhi Gate.

AAP seems to ignore some extremely progressive research emerging from none other than cities of the Global South, particularly from Latin America, that investing in BRTS will pave the way for transport justice at an optimum cost without the country taking on further debt. Transportation experts such as Dinesh Mohan have successfully shown how the Delhi Metro overestimates its benefits and underestimates its costs over time, leading governments and common people to believe that the metro, and not buses, are the key to public transport. The Transport Demand Forecast conducted by RITES in 2011 supports such a stance since it suggests that Delhi can achieve 80 per cent public transport ridership share by 2020 on one condition--that 73 per cent of this share should be provided by dedicated bus lanes.

The cost implications of encouraging an urban rail transit system is huge. In India, as per calculations done in 2014-15, the cost of building elevated rail systems (including monorail and light rail) is around Rs 1,500 million per km and for underground systems is Rs 2,000-2,500 million per km. On the other hand, BRTS cost about Rs 50-100 million per km. Therefore, about 20-30 km of BRTS can be built for each km of the metro^[2].

More importantly, metro systems only work for cities with dense cores and for cities with polycentric urban agglomerations and constantly shifting business districts like Delhi, buses hold the key. Disregarding research and wisdom from successful bus systems like the ones in Medellin and Bogota in Colombia, the AAP has shown no concrete plan of engaging with these ideas.

Considering that Metro trips longer than 10 km are merely 17% of all trips in Delhi^[3], the Delhi government should seriously consider investing in and prioritising buses, instead of metros, just like other Low-Middle-Income countries have done. 

Policy Asks

It is laudable that AAP is injecting equality in a system that has a certain degree of inequality built into it. If resources were no object, then these subsidies would have been welcome. But since that isn’t the case, the AAP will have to be judicious about how it goes about enforcing transport justice and facilitating women’s participation and women’s safety in the city.

First, the Delhi government should invest in and regulate last-mile connectivity such as e-rickshaws and Gramin Sewa autos. Research has shown most trips in Indian cities are in the range of 5 to 10 km, particularly for people engaged in the informal sector of the economy. Often, the cost incurred in the trip from the metro station to somebody’s house is more than the metro ride itself. This severely discourages people from taking the metro, which has any way been shown to be economically unfeasible and time-wise inefficient unless the door-to-door distance is more than 12 km.

Second, the Delhi government should make it possible for people to travel for free in the metro feeder buses and ensure that there is round-the-clock availability of the metro feeder buses. If possible, the metro feeder buses should be equipped with GPS-tracking systems and every bus should employ specially-trained marshalls to control people and help anyone who feels uncomfortable in difficult situations.

Third, the Delhi government should facilitate the planning of an improved BRTS. The way for the future is to invest in public transport that is flexible and relatively portable. Unlike metro systems, BRTS also holds a better possibility of integrating itself with on-the-ground urban social life.

Fourth, the Delhi government should invest in large-scale surveys in association with the Transportation Research and Injury Prevention Programme (TRIPP) of IIT Delhi, the Central Road Research Institute and other concerned agencies to find out changing commuting patterns and the bottlenecks associated with DTC and other cluster buses. Unless the government understands the changing nature of commuting patterns, any investment in upgrading public transport is likely to miss its targets.

The piece was written at the time when free public transport for women in Delhi was in intense discussion.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author, and don’t necessarily reflect the position of CBGA. You can reach Anurag Mazumdar at anuragmazu@gmail.com.

 

^[1] Nishant and Rajendra Ravi (2018): “Riding on Debt: Financial Analysis of Delhi Metro after Phase-III,” New Delhi: Centre for Financial Accountability, DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.31273.85601.

^[2] Mohan, D (2008): “Mythologies, Metro Rail Systems and Future Urban Transport,” Economic and Political Weekly, Vol 43, No 4, pp 41-53.

^[3] Goel, R., and G Tiwari (2014): “Promoting Low Carbon Transport in India: A Case Study of Metro Rails in Indian Cities.”