Another Grand Design

My recent posts seem to have focused on the grandiose, dare I say baroque and extravagant, plans of world leaders. This latest one comes from my adopted second home, Kazakhstan. President Nursultan Nazabayev has decided to build a domed city in his pet project, the capital city Astana. Ironically, this is an idea that I had proposed to people during my time there (perhaps under an inebriated state). The climate of Astana faces 80 degree C swings over the course of the average year, and so I had thought that if possible one might as well just dome the entire capital. Apparently the Kazakhstani President will settle for a luxury neighborhood.

However, this idea, I must point out, is purely a stupid one. While building model cities is all well and good, at its very heart Astana is a Stalinist dream. The difference between it and Dubai is that Dubai actually accords some space to efficiently-run private business (Emirates Airlines and Dubai World come to mind), while Astana is President Nazarbayev's personal whim financed by state oil revenues dished out to contracters in a very post-Soviet fashion of corruption. Furthermore, the President believes that he can bully and cajole foreigners and locals alike into making his dream a reality, ie that Astana will be the "true" center of Kazakhstan, ie the national capital, largest city and business center ("not like Canberra", Nazarbayev's advisers have stated). This strategy has extended into even the attempt last year to force international airlines to fly into Astana rather than Kazakhstan's actual largest city, Almaty.

Like the steppe empires of Attila and Chingis Khan before him, I believe that this city of Nazabayev's, with all of its wonders, is nothing more than a modern Xanadu, that will vanish with his passing from power. Meanwhile, despite - or perhaps because of - all this oil wealth, Kazakhstan's teachers and doctors are among the nation's lowest paid professionals. Recently scores of children in the southern city of Shymkent were infected with HIV by incompetent healthcare providers. The education system is a disaster, lacking even a proper grading system (the Soviet grading system of 2,3,4,5 remains, but no one receives 2's - the worst - and bribes are paid for 4's and 5's). The cities of Kazakhstan are filled with banks and casinos, but few independent businesses, indicating to me that there is a lot of money sloshing around this economy but with no real purpose. Better to invest this money in strengthening Kazakhstan's future potential economy than to waste it on such unnecessary luxuries.