Our guest on this edition of the Geopolitics and Empire podcast is Dr. Balichar Sanghara,

who is the director of graduate studies and senior lecturer on sociology at the University of Kent's School of Social Policy.

One of his research interests is geopolitics and competing economic imaginaries in Central Asia,

which will be the theme of our discussion.

Thank you for joining us, Dr. Sangera.

Thank you.

Thank you for having me.

Why don't we set the context with your publication, a piece you wrote on Open Democracy

a few years ago on Kyrgyzstan, where you describe it as an economic dystopia.

And I kind of feel this is endemic of the post-Soviet states as well in Central Asia, Kazakhstan,

and other neighboring countries.

And so can you describe a bit about Kyrgyzstan's economic dystopia and then perhaps

what are some things it can do to extricate

itself from the plutocracy that that influences it?

Great, yes.

Well, that's a great question to start off with.

I suppose we first have to understand what we mean by dystopia.

And for me, how I'm using it is to suggest why and how people are facing suffering, harm,

lack of well-being, damage to the environment, social fragmentation.

So you get the sense that all these negative

things are happening to a country. And so for me, that's how I understand the term dystopia.

And this is obviously a far cry from the initial expectation when Kyrgyzstan embarked on market reforms, because, you know,

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