Picture yourself in a government ministry, third floor, fluorescent light humming over a conference table. Across from you sits the technical team that spent two years designing a rail rehabilitation project. The economic case is sound. The engineering is solid. Someone has flown in from the regional development bank's headquarters, and she is explaining, carefully, that the project will need to be revised and resubmitted. She does not say it will be rejected. She doesn't need to. You have been through this before.

You never hear about the road that wasn't built. The port expansion that died in a subcommittee. The grid upgrade that made it through three rounds of technical review and then, without ceremony, stopped appearing on any agenda. Somewhere in a development bank's internal structure, a risk committee reviewed that project, weighed something nobody outside the room fully understood, and moved on. The project's proponents were told to revise and resubmit. They rarely do.