This Book Describes How The Uniquely Diverse Country Of Nepal Is Grappling With Change And Continuity, With Some Of The Sharpest Minds On Nepal Writing On Sixteen Areas Of Critical Importance.

A comprehensive and accessible one-volume history of Nepal, first published in 2005.

The contributors to this volume, illuminate the complex relationship - sometimes wary, sometimes accommodative, sometimes violent - between a modernizing, developmentalist state, and the people it professes to represent and benefit.This book covers subjects such as, state, development and local politics, state and ethnic activism, and state and Maoist insurgency. It also contains an important introductory paper on the transformation of the Nepalese State by David N.Gellner.

Paradise Lost examines the state-society relationships in Nepal and demonstrates that the nature of the state, disjuncture between the state and the society, and the rupture of the ideological hegemony of the ruling class of Nepal have created a situation where existing institutional frameworks are disintegrating and the state is rapidly unraveling. Dr. Ali Riaz and Dr. Subho Basu analyze the roles of ethnicity, identity, and deprivation, in engendering discontent and the rise of the Maoists as a formidable political force. Mindful of the geo-strategic importance of the country, this book contextualizes these domestic developments within the post-9/11 global world. Jointly authored by a political scientist and a historian this book brings together structural and historical perspectives. Written in an engaging language, Paradise Lost? will appeal to political scientists, historians, sociologists, and those interested in current affairs.

Contributed articles.

This book focuses on health, healing and health care in Nepal. It presents an intriguing picture: the interplay between the natural processes that cause ill health or diseases and the socio-cultural processes through which people try to understand and cope with them. The work places medical tradition, health politics, gender and health, and pharmaceutical business within the wider politico-economic milieu of Nepal. It also describes the establishment of medical anthropology as an academic discipline, and its relevance for understanding the country’s specific health problems, health care traditions, and health policies. Combining scientific research with practical experiences, the book will serve as a unique resource, especially for health workers, policymakers, and teachers and students in medical schools, those in public health, social medicine, health care, governance and political studies, sociology and social anthropology, and Nepal and South Asian studies.