India, Feb. 1 -- 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 closure. This is the delayed economy. Economists measure taxes in percentages; societies experience them in time. When time becomes the price of ordinary outcomes, growth remains possible, but greatness is deferred. A persistent trust deficit has become India's most expensive hidden levy. When trust declines, systems turn defensive, optimising for insulation rather than outcomes. Protocols multiply not to facilitate work, but to dilute blame. We have created a culture that treats decision-making as a personal risk. High trust environments run lean because accountability is visible and enforcement credible. Low trust environments run heavy because every actor anticipates allegation, audit, escalation or dispute. The progression is predictable: more steps, more files, more committees, and fewer accountable outcomes. In this climate, the process stops being a pathway; it becomes a refuge. This logic is a contagion. In business, contracts are drafted as fortresses. In government departments, officials seek cover before taking a call, until the cover itself becomes the work. In our courts, delay is a deliberate strategy because the cost of stalling is lower than the cost of closure. When institutions cannot reliably protect honest action, paperwork becomes a substitute for trust. Every system houses two types of participants: Doers and blockers. In healthy cultures, the doer is rewarded. In low-trust, high-procedure cultures, the incentives invert. The doer carries the risk; the blocker survives by staying still. Tagore's dead habit is not laziness-it is learned caution masquerading as governance. This is most visible where the state meets the street. Infrastructure projects-hospitals, metros, water systems-are tests of administrative competence. When approvals are fragmented and disputes endless, the physical country grows, but the lived country stalls. In the modern economy, time is a competitive weapon; delay is a silent subsidy to inefficiency and an unpriced punishment for enterprise. High-performing jurisdictions like Singapore or Dubai don't rely on superior virtue; they rely on design. They treat speed-with-accountability as a core value. In India, delay is too often costless, and accountability too often dispersed. Consequently, talent and capital quietly migrate to geographies where closure is predictable. The solution is not more rules-India is saturated with them. The solution is incentives, ownership and enforcement, an institutional reform spine worthy of a republic. First, establish a non-negotiable baseline for core public goods. Infrastructure, public safety, health and education cannot become collateral in political alignment. A mature republic must guarantee these as citizen rights, not factional favours. Second, enforce single-point accountability: One owner, one deadline, one outcome. Committees can advise; they cannot replace ownership. Where everyone signs, no one is responsible. Third, make time-bound decisions the default. Approvals and rejections must be reasoned, time stamped and auditable. Silence should not become a veto. Fourth, replace signature chains with audit trails. Reduce redundant approvals; increase traceability. Strong logs and post decision review can protect honest officers better than endless pre decision permissions. Fifth, restore enforcement certainty. Contracts and court outcomes must translate into timely real-world consequences. Predictable enforcement is the foundation of trust; without it, process becomes a substitute for justice. Finally, reward delivery and penalise delay. Culture follows incentives. If execution is prized and non-performance carries a cost, the system will learn speed. Tagore's poem ends with a prayer that the mind be led forward into "ever widening thought and action". India's next century will not be built on committees and consents. It will be built on decisions and delivery. Otherwise, the clearest stream of reason will keep drowning in paperwork, and we will keep paying the most expensive tax of all: Time....