I have been voting for the last three decades. On My 20, I cast my vote along with my daughter, who was voting for the first time. Many things have changed in India, but if one thing has remained the same, it is the pain the Election Commission inflicts on the voter. The process is cumbersome and reeks of bureaucracy at every step. On a particularly sultry day in Mumbai, voters, including many senior citizens, women and differently abled, were made to wait for hours to cast their vote. It took nearly four hours to cast our votes, and many left, unable to bear the grind.
Though voting has switched from ballot papers to machines, the speed of the process hasn’t improved. Polling officials still use reams of paper to check voter identities, make entries in archaic registers, and obtain signatures before allowing us to press the button. This happens in a country where almost everyone has Aadhaar, where biometric verification is commonplace, and digital payments are made even for a `10 tea at a roadside stall. Why should voting be so cumbersome? It seems designed to discourage anyone but the most motivated.
A whole day is wasted, and countless hours of manpower are lost in bureaucratic red tape. This is not to disparage the selfless work of polling officials, toiling day and night. They are caught in a Kafkaesque system. Imagine the hundreds of thousands of productive hours wasted across a colossal nation, staggering under the weight of an antiquated system that views technological advancement with suspicion.