My university in Upstate New York once sent all its faculty members to Raquette Lake for meditation and brainstorming research ideas. The authorities disconnected all cell phones and sent us to discover the forest so we could think deeply by interacting with nature. Much to our surprise we saw an unusually fat deer running here and there. It was interesting to see how nature worked; while the deer's obesity did ruin its projected beauty, we also realised that it needed the extra weight to fight the future. It was October, just before the advent of the snow season when the whole lake turned into ice. The deer in the forest needed to gain the extra fat to burn it over the winter.  While animals have a high sense of preparedness even though they do not watch weather bulletins on TV, we human beings are often lagging behind in that score. In Bangladesh's case, in particular, our national preparedness for an increasingly dysfunctional Dhaka is a shame.

Accolades never end for Dhaka! One of the worst livable cities on earth - a dusty megacity with the nastiest air quality and highest noise pollution; most unfriendly for walkers and women; a city with the highest traffic-jam tortures and a least amount of sleep, high diabetes, and rising hypertension – all these qualities are attributable to the invincibly growing traffic congestion due to unplanned urbanisation, bad street governance, roadside usurpation, anarchical transport behaviour, and finally, lack of preparedness for the largest growth centre of Bangladesh. 

Dhaka represents 35 percent of our GDP, but that 35 percent controls the whole economy, just as the brain controls the entire activity of the body. The nation cannot energise its growth momentum with an increasingly crippled Dhaka. Rescuing the economy substantively hinges on saving the capital from paralysis. The government has done enough. Flyovers are flying almost everywhere, blocking Dhaka's landscape, roads are being built, and a surface metro rail will occupy the skyline soon. However, none of them can avert the growing urgency for a Patalrail in Dhaka. The nation has no alternative other than implementing an underground train network for a modern Bangladesh.

Dhaka will embrace 20 million people soon and then it will be a global exception for not having a subway metro with that number of people. Dhaka is now one of the top ten megacities of the world but it will experience 53 percent proliferation in population from 2011 to 2025 – the fastest in the world, while a city like Tokyo will see as low as 4 percent growth. This information is enough to act as a wakeup call for the government to start digging the soil where land grabbers have not reached yet, indicating no chance of litigation and land disputes that inordinately delayed the four lanes of the Chittagong-Dhaka-Mymensingh route, whose construction time was slightly less than that for Taj Mahal.    

How do we finance the Patalrail? The best way to fund this megaproject is to dedicate the entire sovereign wealth fund (SWF), which the government will draw from the central bank's foreign reserves of USD 32 billion. If the fund, with an initial size of USD 2 billion and a full-blown size of USD 10 billion, commences its operation, it has to start counting the interest burden from the very first day. Hence, having no big project in mind before, jumping into the SWF would be wasteful and deficit inflating.  Using this fund to support petty cash for other numerous projects is a sad sign of our expensive myopia. It is just like taking a home loan and using it for a nephew's wedding or a brother-in-law's bike or daily groceries.

Bangladesh faces a tough reality of growth, and it has to keep on undertaking megaprojects one after another. Economist Rosenstein-Rodan's theory of a big push could not be more relevant for Bangladesh than right now. The government is on the right track as we have to keep prioritising super projects. But sometimes priorities are misunderstood. The Dhaka Patalrail can stand as the next best transformative project just after the Padma Bridge not only for Dhaka dwellers but also for the whole national economy since Dhaka is the largest growth centre of the country. 

Given the pace of population growth in Dhaka, the surface metro will not be able to service the rush of daily commuters. We have already witnessed many problems in deciding its route and the government had to compromise. Environmental issues will kick off even if we remain blind to aesthetic damages. We are betting on those transport projects which other modern cities are trashing ruthlessly.  No 21st century city will go for partial solutions of flyovers and surface metros when the underground is unfolding boundless opportunities. 

Boston drastically removed flyovers and went for a "big dig" to put the roads under the surface. The Sydney Harbor Bridge is an antique and so is the Brooklyn Bridge. Many governments are now making more under-river tunnels, thereby reducing environmental damages and improving the panoramic beauty of the cities. Why are we buying abandoned ideas just to save money? Buying a typewriter instead of computer is a complete waste, and affording these wasteful myopic projects will delay our journey to be a developed nation.

The basic Patalrail will take five years and it can be in operation in 2021, to mark the golden jubilee of Bangladesh. A primary line from the airport to Motijheel via Farmgate will roughly cost USD 5 billion, and the wealth fund can afford this easily. Patalrail will be the next focal point of aspiration and necessity not only for the government and the people, but also for international investors to see how Bangladesh can envision its bright direction. If Kolkata dreamed of an underground railroad more than 30 years ago, why can't we? In fact, we are in a better position to finance our own underground railroad with the latest technology which will not let us suffer the way Kolkata residents did with their bitter experience of open cuts.

Only money cannot make a nation rich. Even with a similar amount of oil, Middle-Eastern countries are forging different paths of development based on vision and courageous planning.  The Bangladesh regime has already shown ample signs of courageous ventures and the Dhaka Patalrail must be the next by all counts. A wealth fund should create another wealth of preparedness, which the nation will use for centuries just like other modern cities of the world do.

The writer is an adjunct faculty of the Institute of Business Administration at the University of Dhaka. He was a member of the sovereign wealth fund formation committee in the capacity of Chief Economist of Bangladesh Bank. Email: birupakshapaul@gmail.com