Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal’s announcement of free rides to women on the Delhi Metro and public buses predictably led to some approval and much criticism last week. While the opposition criticised the move for being aimed at the state elections due next year, others questioned the burden on the taxpayer and asked why this was being limited only to women, and not children or senior citizens.

This is not the first time AAP has said it would give concessions to certain sections for using public transport. In 2015, its election manifesto had promised concessional passes on the metro and buses to “senior citizens, students and persons with disability”. This, however, faced a hurdle after a 2016 committee report on fixing fares did not recommend an additional discount due to technical limitations (the Automatic Fare Collection system, the report said, would not recognise the elderly/persons with disability).

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Three years later, it’s obvious that the AAP government’s far more ambitious plan to offer free rides to all women will bring its own share of challenges. That’s why it’s imperative that the government use this opportunity to address the issue of women’s safety as well. Whether election gimmick or not, the free ride policy is a welcome step, but it cannot operate in isolation if the ultimate objective is to get more women to occupy public spaces. That can only happen if the government also emphasises safety initiatives on these transport systems.

In a city that has the reputation of being unsafe for women, that will be the best way to ensure that the welfare scheme actually manages to empower women in the long run.

Delhi wouldn’t be the first to offer such a scheme

In October 2018, Indonesia’s second largest city offered free bus rides to travellersin exchange for “dropping off plastic bottles at terminals or directly ‘paying’ a fare with bottles” in an attempt to tackle plastic waste.

The example that has often been cited since AAP’s announcement is Luxembourg, which in December 2018 became the first country to make all public transport free in an attempt to check traffic congestion. The country, which already lets children and young people use public transport for free, will abolish all tickets starting 2020.

New Zealand and the Netherlands have also offered free public transport, although on a much more modest level—the former for a day to celebrate hitting a patronage milestone and the latter for a weekend to mark book week celebrations, where the traveler could present a particular book in lieu of a rail ticket.