Ballot, babas and booth capturing. India needs these back, and now

The EVM has ruined the Indian elections. India taught the world the joy of delayed gratification. Intezaar ka phal meetha hota hai. But what we get is the pungent that is instant.

Two months of rallies, rath yatras, roadshows and revdi ruckus, and the result is out before lunch. Itni jaldi chai bhi thandi nahi hoti. You sit through a 60-day season and the finale is over in two minutes. Maggi takes more time, Gyanesh ji.

That is why the India bloc's demand for paper ballots makes sense. Press it hard, Indi men and women. For you, this is about trust. For the rest of us, this is about content. We long for a longer climax.

Counting days were the only days this democracy was actually watchable. Leads swung like Test cricket on day five. A candidate trailing by 40,000 would be 12,000 ahead after the Ward 7 box opened, and the losing side would discover the word "recount". Now the machine says 2.3 lakh and the story is over. Where is the cliffhanger? Where is Badku Cha, who sits outside the counting centre for 72 hours with one thermos and three theories and more?

Software is for soft countries. India is a hard country. We want hardware. If we are doing elections, let us do it properly, and revive the democracy and old-style allegations too. A democracy that goes paperless has no paper trail to pin it all on Gyanu. The EVM can be accused only of being hacked, which is very lazy and technical. Compare that with the golden age.

Booth capturing, a genuine skill, began as early as 1957. Begusarai, I love you. It needed planning, manpower, lathis (guns were not available easily then) and a sense of timing. It was labour-intensive, employment generating and a Make in India initiative. The booth looter had to walk to the school building in June and scare voters away. Not like some geek like Saurabh Bhardwaj cracking the code open for all, except the Election Commission, to see.

People who have seen the good old days would remember ballot stuffing. That was our crowdfunding. 100% polling to save democracy. We, including children, had to fold all those ballots. They did not have craftsmanship. But they did not cheat. They had to be multiple stampers. One man, one vote was the theory. One man, 40 votes was the practice. The wrist would tire and the pad of ink would go dry. Stamp duty. Today's voter presses a button and the machine goes beep, like a microwave. The old voter put his whole shoulder into it. Dignity of labour, thy name was chhaapo. Reclaim it.

There were the great moments of the invalid vote. A mohar placed with confidence in the centre of the rectangle, crossing the line, kissing the border, or landing on two symbols was generally not indecision or bipartisanship but just clumsy. Thousands of ballots were rejected for this. What a pity!

No machine will ever give you the thrill of a returning officer holding a ballot up to the light, with 10 agents arguing about whether the smudge is a symbol or dried booger.

Add to this the missing keys, the boxes that went to the wrong godown, the polling agent who slept through the whole thing, and the unforgettable counting hall where there will be a power cut at the exact moment of the lead change. Pure cinema.

Some would say that paper ballots are slower, messier and more open to mischief. Loser talk. If paper ballots are complicated, so is a Test series. So is love. We are a cricket-loving nation. Test cricket is real cricket. This T20 novelty will run out and our love for Tests will endure. Bring back Test cricket.

Let democracy take its time. Let the results come on the fourth or fifth day, after a recount, a stay order and a Baghpat-style battle outside the strong room. Let us make some sacrifices for our democracy, as our forefathers did.

Democracy at a press of the button is no fun. Bring back the ballot. Stamp it and stuff it like we used to. Long live India. Long live Indian democracy. Jai Hind. Bharat Mata Ki Jai. Gyanu must go.

Kamlesh (Kishore) Singh is News Director at India Today Group Digital, and one of India's more reliably unreliable opinion columnists. He is also a regular calumnist. Three decades in newsrooms carried him through the Asian Age, Today, CNN-IBN, Metro Now, and Dainik Bhaskar before this current innings, teaching him everything an editor needs to know, including when to break the rules. Off the desk, he moonlights as Tau on Aaj Tak Radio's weekly podcast Teen Taal, and keeps his satire for India Today's opinion pages.