In a quasi-literate country where political parties thrive on opportunism and cheap populism, offering the public free water, electricity, schooling, food etc, one can’t single out the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which in a totally unexpected counter-wave to the BJP shortly after the latter swept General Election 2014, won the Delhi state election with an overwhelming majority. But since it was first elected in 2010 and again in 2015, the AAP government of Delhi state has stuck to the tame path of populism. 

Despite rising costs, it has reduced power charges, enacted legislation to freeze fees of private schools, and has substantially failed to deliver free medical care and medicines in primary health centres. And its latest confrontation is with the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC), which has built and runs the country’s first metro (over and underground) rail network that transports over 2.76 million commuters every day. 

The simple point of dispute is that DMRC, which hasn’t raised commuter fares since 2009, proposes to raise the minimum fare from the current Rs.5 for 2.5 km and the maximum fare of Rs.30 for distances beyond 44 km, to Rs.60. Inevitably, this is opposed by the middle class citizenry of Delhi NCR which has benefited enormously from the construction of the metro city rail network in record time. 

Unfortunately instead of educating the populace about the prime importance of preserving and maintaining its metro rail network — one of the few world class infrastructure projects completed within the promised deadlines in post-independence India — the AAP government has joined the chorus for a continuous freeze of DMRC fares. 

This raises the question as to whether the political class at all understands the function of pricing. The country’s rundown nationalised logistics infrastructure — Indian Railways, state road transport corporations, Air India etc — is standing testimony to the failure to raise prices, i.e, fares, in time. There seems to be no awareness that trains, buses, aircraft, rail tracks and roads need to be well maintained so that the quality of services, including passenger safety, doesn’t decline. In addition to maintaining rolling stock, roads and tracks, the function of price is also to discourage excessive usage. 

A classic case of the consequences of populist pricing is provided by Mumbai’s overcrowded suburban rail network which is unable to adequately finance its maintenance, growth and safety. Season tickets are priced so low that the suburban rail network is unable to purchase modern rolling stock with automatically closing doors, as a result of which nine commuters die in accidents every day. 

The job of the AAP government in Delhi is to draw a lesson from this and educate the local citizenry, who have been gifted a world-class metro network, not endorse their myopic demand for a permanent freeze on DMRC fares.