Kazakhstan, a country four times the size of Texas, used to have two time zones.

As of March 1, it is just one: GMT+5.

Officials say they adopted this change – which was done by requiring only regions in the populous east to set their clocks back by one hour – to end up with a time zone more favorable for the biological rhythms of Kazakhs.

Only western Kazakhs used to benefit from this, they say. Easterners were living ahead of their time, as it were.

This idea of a time zone merger and its possible impact on the population’s health has been studied by a working group of scientists, lawmakers, prominent public figures and apparatchiks over the past year.

“Miscoordination of biological rhythms is the cause of prolonged increased fatigue, depression, insomnia, and decreased performance,” Daulet Aldyngurov, director of the Health Ministry’s Science and Human Resources Department, opined at a government meeting late last year. “It is therefore necessary to synchronize the natural rhythms of the population.”

The whole matter is certainly a boondoggle.

At its widest points from west to east, Kazakhstan spans some 3,000 kilometers – very roughly the distance from Lisbon to Warsaw, which are separated by one time zone. Urumqi, the capital of China’s westernmost region, Xinjiang, which borders Kazakhstan, is three time zones away from Astana.

Correspondents for Tengri News illustrated with images what the new system involves. Photos taken at 6 a.m. in eastern cities on March 1 showed everything already lit by sunlight. Western cities, meanwhile, were still fully in the dark.

This has prompted residents of the East Kazakhstan Region, up in the far northeast, to plead to be allowed to keep their own time zone. The people of the city of Oskemen, or Ust-Kamenogorsk to use its Russian name, will in winter now see the sun go down at 3 p.m. and that dawn will break at 3 a.m in summer. That is hardly in keeping with the body’s natural clock, they complain.

Environmentalist Dmitry Vladimirsky believes that the effect of imposing a single time zone will undermine the stated goal of the initiative.

“This heterogeneity of natural conditions with a single time completely nullifies the meaning of this reform,” Vladimirsky said in remarks to Vremya newspaper, adding that the early onset of darkness in the east will lead to increased loads on an already creaking power grid.

Proponents of the change, meanwhile, make a case on economic and administrative grounds. By drawing the time zones of Russia and Europe closer to that of Kazakhstan, commercial and diplomatic communications will become smoother and thereby improve, they argue.