Having taken a battering that resulted in its relegation to the third spot in each of the seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi, the Aam Aadmi Party appears desperate to regain some of its earlier favour with the electorate: only at the Assembly level to be sure, for it lost 0-7 to the Bharatiya Janata Party in 2014 as well.

Hence, Arvind Kejriwal’s out-of-the-blue proposal that women travel free on the Delhi Metro, and local buses. In typical Kejriwal fashion the surprise proposal was made at a press conference without consulting his MLAs, and was followed by then asking his officials to work out plans to give effect to his political ploy.

That neither the Lieutenant-Governor or the Urban Development Ministry ~ the “partner” in the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation ~ were party to the proposal suggests yet another bid to ignite a Central-State government controversy: the people of Delhi have long-suffered such stand-offs triggered by the immaturity of the AAP leadership. Kejriwal might relish another such scrap dominating the headlines before the next Assembly polls, but will that suffice to keep the BJP at bay?

Apart from the host of technical complications that free travel for women on the Metro will create, it will revive the consistently-rejected demand for concessional fares for students, the differentlyabled etc. When Kejriwal was unable to force a withdrawal of the general fare-hike two years ago, to think of free travel for an estimated 30 per cent of the commuters was fanciful, to put it mildly.

Most transportation experts have rejected the move projected as a women’s-safety effort and opined that augmenting bus services would have yielded better results. The chief minister hardly impresses by saying that an additional budgetary provision of Rs 800 crore will be made for the rest of the financial year but does not commit himself to the non-raising of fares thereafter.

Such cheap politics could reduce the Metro to the dire financial straits in which the bus services now flounder. The Kejriwal argument that women will be free to pay their way if they so desire is too ridiculous to comment upon. The nation has just passed through the most divisive election in history, the AAP now appears to seek to create a gender-divide too. Maybe the Chief Minister and his cohorts will not feel the pinch, they travel in “official” cars much of the time, but most men will resent the move.

So will modern women who insist on equality and will take insulting offence at a gender-based sop. As expected, the political reaction has been vicious. Yet Kejriwal will be thrilled at having sown the seeds of yet another controversy, his contribution to the skewed politics of divide and rule. Governance and gimmickry remain the order of the day: the former is much more difficult. Sadly, most political parties subscribe to that theory.