Thapa Politics In Nepal

Bhimasena Thapa, 1775-1839, former prime minister of Nepal.

Nepal as a nation-state was established in 1769 by King Prithvi Narain Shah. He was then a 'Raja' of the tiny hill-state of Gorkha in western Nepal. He unleashed a dormant national energy that saw the creation of a Hindu Kingdom of the Himalayas that was separate and distinct from both India, which was under British Rule (British Raj) in the south, and Tibet, which was within the ambit of the Chinese Empire in the north. In this work, Minto Jung Thapa looks at the efforts to develop the public administration system of the country following the 'revolution' of 1951 that ended the century of family autocracy of the Rana Prime Ministers. He places these efforts in the context of the constitutional and political changes that Nepal experienced from 1950 to 1974. He is always reminded of the words of philosopher George Santayana, "Those who do not remember the past, or who do not learn from history, are condemned to repeat it." Public Administration in Nepal covers many topics including politics and administration, the civil service, personnel administration, organisation and methods, institution-building, and the challenges of transnational inducement of change and development.

Contents.

Battles of the New Republic: A Contemporary History of Nepal is a story of Nepal's transformation from war to peace, monarchy to republic, a Hindu kingdom to a secular state, and a unitary to a potentially federal state. Part-reportage, part-history, part-analysis, part-memoir, and part-biography of the key characters, the book breaks new ground in political writing from the region. With access to the most powerful leaders in the country as well as diplomats, it gives an unprecedented glimpse into Kathmandu's high politics. But this is coupled with ground-level reportage on the lives of ordinary citizens of the hills and the plains, striving for a democratic, just and equitable society. It tracks the hard grind of political negotiations at the heart of the instability in Nepal. It traces the rise of a popular rebellion, its integration into the mainstream, and its steady decline. It investigates Nepal's status as a partly-sovereign country, and reveals India's overwhelming role. It examines the angst of having to prove one's loyalties to one's own country, and exposes the Hindu hill upper-caste dominated power structures. Battles of the New Republic is a story of the deepening of democracy, of the death of a dream, and of that fundamental political dilemma - who exercises power, to what end, and for whose benefit.

In June 2001, King Birendra Bir Bikram Shah was killed in a massacre at Kathmandu s Narayanhiti royal palace, allegedly by his own son, the crown prince, and the world took new notice of Nepal. Since then, several thousand lives have been lost to a violent Maoist insurgency and repressive state counter-insurgency. Parliamentary democracy, too won late, in 1990 has been lost. And there are no clear indications of how long it will be before the civil war ends and popular government is restored. In this illuminating study of the tangled politics of her country, Manjushree Thapa examines what has gone wrong, and why. Starting with an account of the Narayanhiti massacre and its aftermath, she goes back in time to trace the history, often chaotic, of Nepal s monarchy since unification in the 18th century, and of the struggle, in the 20th century, for genuine democracy. She ends with a record of her trek into Maoist-held territories in west Nepal, where the majority continue to live in poverty, human rights abuses are on the rise, and boys and girls as young as thirteen have taken to the gun. A skilful mix of history, reportage, memoir and travel writing, Forget Kathmandu is an unprecedented examination of Nepal s past and present. The gifts of insight and lucidity that Thapa brings to her intensely political narrative make this one of the finest works of non-fiction from the subcontinent in recent times.

This work contains the first comprehensive study of Nepalese voters. It is based on hour-long interviews with 1000 Nepalese voters spread over the Himalayan kingdom. The survey was conducted immediately after the general election in May 1991, the first election to take place under the multiparty system which was introduced after the mass uprising in April 1990. This study registers the political attitudes prevailing in Nepalese society, the voters' perceptions of political problems, their evaluations of party differences, their participation in the election campaign and eventual partisan choice.