India is one of the world’s IT superpowers, right? Well, it does not reflect in its General Election schedule. While polls in countries as big as the US take a day, the counting beginning moments after the final vote has been cast, in India, it is a long drawn affair. The time taken between the first and the last vote polled could take up to a month, or even more, in a General Election. The 2019 Lok Sabha polls, schedule for which was announced on Sunday, will be a 38-day affair, even though the phases have been reduced from nine to seven. Why, even an Assembly election in Bihar or UP could stretch for up to three or four weeks. So the obvious question to ask is why should it take so long to organise polls in a country which otherwise runs online? Why can’t government procedures go digital to speed up proceedings, instead of depending on the decades-old practice of slow movement and deliberation? To be sure there is a background to these extended election forays. In the bad old days of ballot boxes being snatched or captured and stuffed by hired guns of the ruling party or the local strongman, it made sense to move paramilitary troops to “sensitive” polling booths, which is a time-consuming process. 

But in today’s India, where law and order can be maintained not just by massive police presence, but also at the click of a smartphone button or a WhatsApp message, surely there is a case for reforming and making the poll process shorter and simpler. CCTV cameras inside booths and smartphones, which veritably each poll officer and agent has in any case, can immediately capture any wrongdoing, the evidence being as incontrovertible as a magistrate’s report. The movement of official communications do not have to depend upon the office rider, but on swift messaging services available online. With the kind of IT and modern technology that India has at its disposal, it can be no one’s case that the arrangements for organising the elections — unarguably the biggest in the free world — should take such a long time. There are other fallouts of such extended affairs. For close to two to three months, all decision making — sluggish at the best of times — comes to a standstill, thanks to the Model Code of Conduct. India can ill afford to get into a situation where all government working is kept in abeyance until a new set-up assumes charge. Add to it the common bugbear: Rising poll expenses. It does not need a rocket scientist to calculate that the longer the election process, the more money will be spent. There is a raging debate already over excess and unaccounted for poll expenses and it makes sense to cut the election period shorter. To be sure, holding elections in India is a complicated affair. Unlike the US or Australia, the population pressure in this country is 20-fold higher. The infrastructure is still medieval as compared to developed countries. Nonetheless, it makes sense to upgrade rather than lie in a limbo.