Ticket To Nowhere: Free bus rides for all women in Kerala are a bill for everyone else

Kerala has probably the best bus transport net­work in the country, a mix of private companies and Kerala State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) services by the government. Bus stops are ubiq­uitous and a steady line of buses connects people both to short and long distances. It is a model that works. How do you fix something that is not broken? Make it free.

KSRTC is a loss-making body and one of the first things that the newly elected Congress-led government in Kerala has done is to make all rides on its buses free for all women.

This was not a surprise. Their election manifesto promised it and it is good to be true to your promise. And yet the promise itself shouldn’t have been made. For one, this is not for poor women but for everyone. If you are the daughter of the richest man in Kerala, you can still go on a bus ticketless.

Such policies might be termed freebies, but there is no such thing as a free service. Someone is always paying for it, usually those individuals and companies who are unfortunate enough to come under the tax-paying bracket. They— at least the men among them—get nothing in return. Why not make bus rides free for everyone in the state? That should mean even more votes. Because then the economic argument rears its head—how can something that requires input costs be given free without bankruptcy? There is recognition of how disastrous this path can be by every political party, and yet they all feel compelled to test its limits.

And it has worked. Courting the women’s vote has been de rigueur for almost every state election in recent times. In Maharashtra, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Mahayuti gave a monthly stipend to a large percentage of women between the ages of 21 and 65, and won resound­ingly. Freebies for women are however now turning into a baseline. You might not get votes from them but will have no hope of power if you don’t do it. And that slope is already getting endlessly slippery.