India, Jan. 31 -- Rabindranath Tagore's Where the Mind is Without Fear was more than a poetic yearning; it was a blueprint for national character. He envisioned an India where reason runs clear, knowledge is unfenced and the country is not "broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls". Yet, his warning about the "clear stream of reason" losing its way into the "dreary desert sand of dead habit" is, in fact, urgent governance advice.

Seventy-five years post-Independence, India's scale is unquestionable, but scale is not velocity. Beneath our headline growth numbers lies a quiet constraint: Decision-making has become heavier than our talent deserves. We are administratively busy but operationally slow-rich in procedure, yet poor in c...