India has always been a growing country. As our population continues to grow every year, the need for improved infrastructure has also increased, particularly in terms of the vehicles we use and the roads we rely on. There has never been long-term planning, and with all the gaps, we are compelled to waste hours stuck in traffic on roads, adversely impacting our personal and professional lives. As most of our cities were never built to accommodate the growing population and increased vehicles, we are stuck in a never-ending congestion that hinders smooth flow in the country.

Why Our Cities Are Designed to Slow Us Down?

Being a powerhouse of knowledge and intelligence, urban planning in our country could never adapt to the pace of growth and has always been random. The focus was never on making proper structures for lanes, residential pockets, and workspaces, but on adjustments that made sense for that particular day.

And over the years, instead of utilizing abundant land, resources, and skills, this habit of “jugaad-based planning” has built the foundation of most Indian cities. Instead of building roads, transport systems, and neighbourhoods with the future in mind, we kept expanding wherever space allowed, and not where it made sense. And, the result of this is mismanaged cities, crowded neighbourhoods, congested roads, and a never-ending frustration. In all these ways, our cities didn’t evolve; they just reacted. Building up the burden that is constantly slowing us down.

Infrastructure in India has never kept pace with the population. Many unresolved issues, like outdated traffic signals, road bottlenecks, and flyovers without fixing the ground-level choke point, have always added to the issue. Even basic things like lane markings, parking spaces, and bus bays are missing in many cities. There has also been a mixed use of land without planned space for residence, commerce, and highways for the increasing population.

Another major reason our cities feel stuck is that we never built them for people or to give them a better lifestyle. Most of our major cities and almost entire tier 2, cities lack basic footpaths, crossing the roads has always been unsafe, and major city designs still prioritize cars over pedestrians, buses, or bicycles. With no safe, smooth, or reliable options to walk or take public transport, people naturally turn to private vehicles. And the roads became unable to handle that increased load of private vehicles, which keeps slowing them down.

When Public Transport Fails, Traffic Takes Over

There are multiple types of public transport available in India that should be considered as the backbone of how cities move. Every day, we see new rail getting inaugurated, metro stations coming to life, and thousands of new e-rickshaws adding up on the road, which makes millions of people choose to commute using these means for almost all of their work. It is an incredibly easy, time-saving, and cheaper way of mobility. Trains, buses, metros, rickshaws, shared autos, etc, are readily available for conveyance throughout the country. But, despite hours of dedication and hard work by public transport providers, there is a gap that often makes this transport system unreliable. 

Even after having trains and buses all over the country, from Kashmir to Kanyakumari, and a web of metro lines covering entire states, the number of private vehicles is rapidly increasing. Among many factors that lead people to choose private transport over public transport are poor maintenance, unannounced delays, lack of safety for women, and, primarily, lack of civic sense. Many reports highlight issues like a lack of basic hygiene and sanitation in the washrooms in top-class trains and metropolis stations. Stations are dirty, leaving no space for people to sit. And many are so overcrowded that theft and eve-teasing become a normal thing. 

All of these problems lead people to choose their private cars and two-wheelers. As per this article by The Times of India, Tier city Bengaluru, which gives millions of people jobs and is the technical hub of India, sees a rise of vehicles every hour. This report states that Telangana adds 3,000 new vehicles every day. With these statistics, one thing becomes clear: people are getting hit by traffic. And since our roads and highways are not meant to bear this exponential load every day, roads become insufficient, which impacts our overall quality of life.

Impacts on the Quality of Living

As cities expanded, population and congestion levels grew, and actual growth always stayed slow. Year after year, commercial and residential areas kept on blending without any structure, leaving no footpaths and mixed land use. The differentiation of areas is so thin that you step out of your home, and the first thing you meet is noise, fumes, and congestion. Uneven planning in the distribution of lands for separate means mixes everything, which also leads to unclean streets, messed-up residences, and disturbed workspaces, which eventually makes it difficult for people to lead a peaceful life.

As commute times in major cities have increased by 20–60% in the last decade, even basic routines like dropping a child off at school, buying groceries, and reaching the nearest metro station have become stressful jobs. With drivers spending over extra hours annually, it affects their productivity, physical and mental well-being, family life, and economic balance. Children spend hours in school buses, stuck in traffic, which drops their energy levels for the day. Residential areas are becoming highways, leaving people in chaos and kids unable to enjoy outdoor activities freely due to a lack of safety.

Traffic is a daily dysfunction that leads to other larger consequences as well, including air and noise pollution, which causes respiratory and cardiovascular issues in people and often disrupts their overall well-being. This article shows how our life suffers because of traffic, and there is no doubt in the truth, that the situation is far from getting better instantly. But amidst all this, it is also important to think of the ways to reflect and think of how we can become part of the solution instead of just continuing to complain, because our combined efforts are needed to make the situation better.

What We Can Do to Ease Urban Stress

Indian cities are growing faster than the systems that support them, and while urban planning failures have shaped much of the problem, our daily choices have shaped it too. Cities don’t become better on their own; they become better when the people living inside them demand better planning, use public spaces responsibly, and take small actions that ease the weight on already stressed systems. If we want a better place to live, then we have to take some responsibility for ourselves and work on collective behaviours, and start conversations that show changes over time.

We can start by accepting the problem at a personal level and by following basic road sense, including no wrong-side driving, no blocking junctions, no sudden stops, and no parking on narrow lanes. We need to ensure that we don’t exploit and support local systems. We should keep bus stops clean, report broken streetlights, demand safer footpaths, and use the metro, buses, and autos responsibly instead of overcrowding, misusing, or damaging them. Clean and safe public transport can become a major solution as we can utilise it by sharing rides with colleagues or neighbours, avoiding unnecessary solo trips, and choosing to walk or cycle for short distances. 

Small actions, when done consistently and collectively, can genuinely shift how a city feels. For example, a group of residents in Sarjapur, Bengaluru, began a simple community carpooling initiative with neighbours who commute the same way, sharing rides. This helped reduce the number of private vehicles on the road,  easing traffic around local choke-points and reducing fuel use. Some cities are also trying smart traffic management and public transport integration instead of endlessly widening roads. With planned and proper bus-rapid-transit (BRT) corridors, real-time bus info systems, and enforced parking zones, we can improve commute times and reduce jams.

A Future With Better & Planned Cities

Yes, all this urban chaos comes from systematic problems. Poor urban planning, government-level gaps, weak enforcement, political neglect, and a lack of civic sense mean that lasting change requires both community-level intent and proper civic-policy support. But it is always we who get harmed by this widening gap between “development” and “liveability”, which makes it very important to understand what we can do to make our cities more livable. With India being one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, its strength comes from its citizens and their individual and collective power to bring change even in the hardest of storms. If we all start acting on our small, consistent, intentional, and shared steps, we will begin the slow process of reclaiming an efficient, livable, human-scale of our lives. 

Now it is time for you to tell us your story.
How do you feel the impact of poor planning in your everyday life?
And, have you ever taken a small civic action that made a real difference?
Let’s reflect, write, and act because the responsibility of our future is on us.