Reviews of the latest books from and on Southasia

CNAS, Tribhuvan University Katbmandu
Vol 18 No 2 (July 1991) of Contributions to Nepalese Studies containstwo book reviews—JayarajAcharya´s^Dcscri/Jfi´ve Grammar of Nepali and an Analyzed Corpus and David N. Gellncr´s Monk, Householder and Tantrik Pries´; Newar B uddhism and tts ftj´ruab an d scv gn papers. Prayag Ra j Sha rma, reviewing Gellner argues that Newar Buddhism survived and preserved its distinct sectarian identity even amidst an overwhelming Hindu influence. *´It has to sustain itself in isolation|T he argues, L1shom of all intellectual and ideological contacts with the centres of medieval Buddhism in Nalanda, Vikramasila and Odantapuri in North India, after their destruction by the invasion of the Miislims there in the 13th century."
Sunil Kumar Jh a classifies and analyses the vowels and diphthongs of Maithili and Ramavater Yadav investigates the process of cliticilation in Maithili. Iswarananda Shresthacharya looks at the graphic and classifier verbbases in the Newari language and Madhav P. Pokhrel the compound verbs in Nepali language. Ale*Kondos, VivienneKondos and India Ban conclude that untouchable {and to a lesser extent, women) do not figure amongst the giants of Nepal´s industrial class and Gunanidhi Sharnia warns that unless Nepalis "strike a plausible balance between the interests of politicians, administrators and the busin ess finances, the productive sector will find themsclv es further und erdeveloped, for wh ich external over dependence may continue in future yearsTP.
Vnll9 Nol (Jan 1992) contains Scssays: "Modem Nepalese poems and paintings: Canons and Contexts" by Abhi Siibedi; Gancsh Gurung ´s "S ocioeconomi c Network of a Tarai Village-. An Account of Rana Tharus ofTJrma Urmi"; "Concepts of Mental "Illness; An Ethnopsychiatric Study of the Mental Hospital´s In- and Out-Palients in the Kathmandu Valley" by Heinz B oker, "The Bad i: Prostitution asaSocial Norm Among an Untouchable Caste of West Nepal" by Thomas Coi; "The lndra Jatra of Kathmandu as a Royal Festival: Past and Present" by Gerald Toffin; "An Approach to Human Resource Planning in Nepal, The Case of Nepal Civ ilServ ice" by Dhami P, Sinha. It also has Khadga Basnct´s "Sagarmatha (Mt. Everest) National Park; Conservation for Sustainable Development"; Sushila Manandhar´s "Unsuccessful Cases in Woman Development Programme"; a review article by Kamai P. Malla "Nepaln Mahatmya: A IX- Century Teil or a Pious Fraud?", and review of Manjushree Thapa´s book, Mustang Bltol in Fragments by Saubhagya Shah.
Nepali Journal of Constitutional and Parliamentary
Exercises    f
VollNol, 1993
LokRaj Baral andSurya Dhwigel. editors
This is the first issue of an annual journal published by the
Society for Constitutional and Parliamentary Exercises
(SCOPE). This issues contains: "Parliamentary Practice in
Nepal" by ArjunNareingh K.C.; "Legislative Committee" by
Frank P, Grad; "Parties in Parliament" byLok Raj Band; "The
Role of the Opposition in Nepal´s Nascent Parliament" by
Pashupali SJB Rana; "Parliamentary Monarchy in Nepal" by
Rishikesh Stiaha and "Parliament of Indja" by Subash C.
Kashyap.
Forest or Farm? The Politics of Poverty and Land Hunger
In Nepal
by Krishna Ghimere
Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1992
ISBN0L956289OX
TRs 290
Using a broad political economic perspective, Ghimere analyzes
the phenomenon of sukumbasi in Nawalparasi district in
central Tarai. Defined as a "landless settler seeking to secure
the legal right to cultivate the parcel of land which he and his
family occupy," the sukumbasi has long been the victim of
state-regulated land use policies. The author traces the origins
of landlessness in Nepal to the historical development of
highly skewed pattern of land ownership that evolved as a
central feature of its unification process.
 
Continued immiscrizationof the peasantry, widescale failure of post-1951 land reform measures, and mismanaged resettlement programs of the Panchayat regime are held responsible for the deprivation of the sukumbasis. Ghimcre argues that the sukumbasis desire to own land in the Tarai because the security prov ided by stab) s crops and sh clter gives them greater freedom in the wage-labour market dominated by buyers. The Nepah state, on the other hand, declares them "illegal squatters" representing various interests and tries to evict them through physical violence and other means. Calling the present forest conservation policies which bypass the subsistence needs of the sukumbasis a luxury, Gh imere argues that enough land exists in the Tarai lo be distributed to the snkumbasis in small-holdings. Therefore, he Bays, Nepal with its increasing population of sukumbasis should distribute the productive land of the Tarai in small-holder settlements and grow trees for conservation in the relatively less productive lands in the hills.
Nepal, a Bibliography
Safari Mukltopadhyaya, editor
compiled by Dina jV. Wadhwa
Shatada Publishing House, Delhi, 1991
ISBN 81 B561GO0 0
IRs350
Organized under 34 subject headings, this is an annotated
bibliography of works published on Nepal mostly between
1951 and 1989.1301 entries, including monographs, periodicals
and articles mainly published in english are given, A 38-page
index makes it very useabtc.
Occasional Papers in Sociology and Anthropobgy Vol 3
Gopal Singh Nepali el ai, editors
Cent ralDepartmcntofSociologyand Anthropology,Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, 1993 NRs Ti US S
This is a collection of nine essays. Earlier vereions of some were presented in the first national congress of SASON in September 1992 in Kathmandu. lite essays are "Forestry and Fanning System in the Mid-Hills of Nepal" by Kiran D. Upadhyay;"Soeio-Economic and Cultural Aspects of Ageing in Nepal" by R. R. Regmi; "Religion, Society and State in Nepal" by Dipak R. Pant; "Community Development as Strategy to Rural Development" by Kailash Pyakuryal: "National Integration in Nepal" by Ganesh M Gurung and B ishnu Bhandari;´ The Failure of Confidence Mechanism " by Tulsi Ram Pandey; "Building a new American Academic Anthropology" by Thomas Con; "Afro- American Sociologist and Nepali Ethnography" by Stephen Mikcsell and "Case Studies on Domestic Servants: Reflections on Rural Poverty" by Saubhagya Shah
A Himalayan Enclave in Transition; A Study of Change in the Western Mountains nfNepal by Biiiari K. Shrestha ICIMOD Kathmandu, 1993 ISBN 929115 1130
The author was part of a Royal Nepal Academy team that conducted multidisciplinary research in Diyargaon, a village located at the head of (heSinja River Valley in north west Jumla in 1970. Based on fieldwork done two decades later, this study seeks to provide details regarding "the nature and direction of changes" in Diyargaon since the first study and documents "how different forces interact with one another at the micro-level" lo produce those changes. The author hopes that his attempt to develop "an understanding of the dynamic of the mountain environment and its communities" will be helpful in "achieving the desired development goals in mountain areas" of Nepal.
Separate chapters devoted to ch anges in the economy, forest resources, patterns of long distance trade and migration, and village politics constitute the main body of this work. An additional chapter discusses "development interventions." Shrestha concludes that population growth in Diyargaon has worsened the "already acute problems of shelterand sustenance for most of the village inhabitants." Steps described as essential "to enhance the quality of lifeand of the environment
 
in the region" include "local-level planning", "participatory approach to development interventions", "retargeting the poverty alleviation programme" so that the poorest of the community gain exclusive access to credit facilities, "capital loans fortiadbg", "women´s development" with aims for their "empowerment and enabiemcnt"´ "population control" "road artery", "enhancement of "non-farm income and employment opportunities outside the region."
Shrestha concludes: "Given the direness of the present situation, possibilities should be explored for attracting and engaging one or more multinational firms to invest in the development of the Karnali zone as a business venture under conditions that they might find sufficiently lucrative."
Water Nepal
Vol 3 No 2-3, Oct 1993
Ajay Dixil. editor
Water Nepal Conservation Foundation
NRs 100
This issue of Water Nepal, in a new book formal looks at [he
conflicts in development of water resources between India and
Bangladesh, Nepal,India and Bangladesh, Israel and Palestine,
and the sharing of Cauvery waters between Kamataka and
Tamil Nadu in India. It includes articles on seismic safety
assessment of concrete dams, management of a largescale
farmers managed irrigation scheme in Nepal Tarai and
maintenance and management of community water supply
schemes.
Falling OFT the Map: Some Lonely Places of the World
by Pico Iyer
Viking Penguin Books, India, 1993
IRsl95
"But lonely places are not just isolated places, fo rloneliness is
a state of mind. "…(A)ll lonely places have something in
common, if only the fact that all are marching to the beat of a
different satellite drummer. And many are so far from the
music of the world that they do not realise how distant they are.
"More than in space, than it is in time that lonely places are often exiled, and it is their very remoteness from the present tense that gives them their air of haunted glamour. The door slams shut behind them and they are alone with colourless and yellowed snapshots, scraps of old bread and framed photographs of themselves when young."
Thus prefaced, this book is an account of Iyerhs travels to North Korea, Argentina, Cuba, Ireland, Bhutan, Vietnam, Paraguay and Australia. Iyer went to Bhutan in 1989 and he writes about flying into Bhutan in the first ever comm ereial j et-fli ght, v isiting dzongs ("the huge whi tcwashed sev enteenth – century fo rtres s monasteries cum administrative centres"!, visiting Torkstang ("The greatest of all Bhutanese monuments") of living in Thimphu and Pare, of reading Kuensel ("a paper rich in surprises"), of browsing in the Thimphu public library where, "the shelves were labelled not with the categories of books but with the names of the donors," and of makingunsucccssful trunk calls. Iyer writes ".. yet what was most surprising about Bhutan was how little really want wrong, how efficiently everything worked. Like the other countries of the High Himalaya, Bh utan had an ai r of gentleness and calm that left no room forchaos. The Bhutan csel met were unfailingly punctual and unreasonably honest."
"…and what impressed me most, the longer I stayed, was nol so much that the peopledid not know foreign goods as they did not seem to want to know them. Theirs seemed a genuine innocence, the resiillof cho ice as much as ci rcumstauce, in a p ro [ ected land where schoolbo ys told tne that thei r favou ri tc parties were ones that featured ´monk dances.´ Bhutan struck me as a strangely seeularplace, …a near inversion of Tibet. In many respects Bhutan is still in a state of benevolent despotism." When Drukpaisation began, which Lhotshampas there pretested, Iyer writes lie "could sense the first stirrings of a modernising impulse".
B: This instalment of Abstracts is devoted excljsively
to recent publications an Nepal, other than for the bock by
Pico Iyer. Thanks to Pratyoush OnlB.    -Editors