Built to Move, Designed to Stop

In India, something curious happens whenever a new road is built.

Be it in Banaras, Mumbai, or even a quiet town like Karjat, a smooth stretch of freshly laid asphalt is inaugurated with much fanfare. For a brief moment, traffic flows the way roads are meant to.

And then, within weeks—sometimes days—speed breakers appear.

Often crudely constructed. Sometimes unofficial. Occasionally so frequent that the road begins to feel less like a pathway and more like a rhythm of acceleration and braking.

What fascinates me is not the speed breakers themselves. It is the demand for them.

Most of these are not imposed by engineers or urban planners. They are demanded by local residents who do not trust drivers to slow down when they see a sign. And, to be fair, that distrust is often justified.

But this phenomenon raises a deeper question: Why do we instinctively design systems that slow things down?

The logic of distrust

The speed breaker is more than a piece of concrete. It is a physical manifestation of distrust.

The speed breaker is more than a piece of concrete. It is a physical manifestation of distrust.

We don’t trust drivers to behave responsibly. We don’t trust signs or rules to be respected. So we design infrastructure that forces compliance through friction.

This mindset extends far beyond our roads.

Consider a truck driver on an Indian expressway. He knows the left lane is meant for slower vehicles. Yet he will cruise in the middle or fast lane—until he spots a police vehicle in the distance. Only then does he correct his behaviour.

The rule exists. The driver knows it. But compliance happens only when enforcement becomes visible.

Speed breakers, in that sense, are not just a traffic solution. They are a governance instinct.

The bureaucratic speed breaker

The same instinct is visible in our administrative systems.

India’s bureaucracy is, in many ways, remarkably capable. Our civil servants are highly educated and have cleared one of the toughest examinations in the world.

Yet the systems they administer often produce layers of friction.

Fine print. Overlapping approvals. Contradictory regulations.

Entrepreneurs frequently encounter situations where two government departments issue directives that effectively cancel each other out. The objective of the policy becomes secondary. What emerges instead is a maze of procedural speed breakers.

At that point, the system offers two paths: pay ‘speed money’, or endure the process—where the process itself becomes the punishment.

Anyone who has built a business in India has experienced this.

When technology replicates friction

For a while, many of us believed that technology would solve this problem.

Digital governance promised to eliminate middlemen, reduce paperwork, and speed up processes.

Yet something interesting has happened.

Whenever possible, we seem to recreate the same frictions—only now in digital form.

Online portals that require multiple redundant uploads. Approval chains that move no faster than physical files. Systems designed more to control behaviour than to enable outcomes.

The medium has changed. The mindset hasn’t.

We have simply built digital speed breakers.

Why does this keep happening?

Which brings us back to the central question: why does India instinctively create friction?

Education alone cannot explain it. Many of the officials designing these systems are fully aware of their consequences—delays, higher costs, slower innovation.

When people are not rewarded for speed and outcomes—but are punished for mistakes—the safest strategy becomes caution.

So what drives it?

Is it risk aversion? Pride in procedural authority? Or simply misaligned incentives?

When people are not rewarded for speed and outcomes—but are punished for mistakes—the safest strategy becomes caution.

And caution, when institutionalised, eventually produces speed breakers.

What others have tried

Some countries have attempted to address this through incentive design.

Singapore, for instance, pays senior civil servants salaries comparable to top private-sector executives, aligning incentives around performance and efficiency.

China, in its own very different way, has tied the career progression of local officials to measurable economic outcomes within their jurisdictions.

Both approaches, despite their differences, attempt to answer the same question: How do you design systems that reward progress rather than control?

An ‘anti-speedbreaker’ principle

India today stands at an inflection point.

Our physical infrastructure is improving dramatically. Highways, airports, and logistics networks are being built at unprecedented speed.

But infrastructure alone cannot accelerate a nation.

What we also need is a shift in institutional philosophy.

Instead of asking how to control behaviour, we need to ask how to enable movement.

What would governance look like if every policy were tested against a simple question: Does this remove friction—or add another speed breaker?

Imagine an ‘anti-speedbreaker’ principle embedded into policymaking—fewer approvals, clearer accountability, and systems designed for flow rather than control.

Not just in infrastructure, but in business regulation, civic governance, and digital systems.

Beyond roads

Because the real speed breakers in India are not on our roads.

They are in our systems. In our institutions. And perhaps most importantly, in our mindset.

The day we stop instinctively designing friction into every system may be the day India truly begins to move at the speed its potential deserves.

Until then, we will keep building beautiful roads.

And then slowing ourselves down on them.