The locals may not like him, but were it not for Borat who would pay any attention to a report on Science and Technology in Kazakhstan?
In June 2006, the government of Kazakhstan asked the National Research Council (NRC) in the USA to carry out "a study of the current status and the potential for future development of the science and technology (S&T) base of the country". You can get hold of a prepublication copy from the National Academy Press.
As well as the promised coverage of science and technology, there is a crash course on the country – including its Soviet past and all the militaristic trappings that went with it, such as the "world’s first breeder nuclear reactor". Another bit of that Soviet heritage is "a well educated population, with a literacy rate of almost 99 percent". But since the Russians quit, it has been downhill all the way on he education front.
"Many talented educators have left the country while others have entered private business, given the low academic salaries. At the same time, the general interest among the youth in scientific careers has diminished since well paying jobs in research and in scientific services have been scarce and since the prestige of being a scientist that developed during Soviet times has steadily declined."
Where have we read that last bit before?
Among the issues that the NRC fund is a disconnect between academic science and "the 25 independent research institutes that had formerly been under the management of the National Academy of Sciences of Kazakhstan".
Another important lesson for others is that not everyone can be at the cutting edge of research. As the report puts it:
"The intense interest of the leadership of the country in the potential economic payoffs from development of “break through” technologies seems to have pushed the importance of modernizing established technologies into the background. In the near term, upgrading established technologies will often have higher payoffs than attempting to introduce entirely new products and processes into uncertain domestic or international commercial markets."
There are times when you feel like saying that to folks a bit nearer home.
The report also offers advice on providing incentives for entrepreneurs and on government procurement. On a more 'philosophical' level, it warns of slavish belief in the "linear model that depicts the movement of an idea from basic research to applied technology to design and development and then to a successful process, product, or service". Again, something to drum into policy makers elsewhere.
More worrying maybe is the report's point that there is "limited in-house capability to assess oil, gas, and mineral reserves as a basis for setting development and extraction policies and for negotiating and controlling the activities of national and international companies operating in the country". That leaves the Kazakhs prey to the oil industry's wide boys.
All in all, an interesting read with implications far beyond the land of Borat.
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