Elections are considered a festival of democracy. India is now debating how often this festival should be held. There are several compelling reasons for simultaneous elections. First, our huge and ever-increasing population will make periodic elections unmanageable. Holding elections when the population was a hundred million is one thing, but holding multiple elections with one billion people will be a considerable challenge. Nowhere else in the world do a billion population go to exercise their adult franchise twice over in five years. If you include elections for local self-governing bodies, one billion people will vote three times over five years. Critics have argued that the cost is exaggerated, but their computations do not include the actual price and impact on the polity. And even if it’s manageable today, it will become unmanageable soon with our growing population.