'…an excellent contribution to our understanding of Nepal's current situation and worth the attention of anyone seriously interested in the subject.' -- JOHN WHELPTON in European Bulletin of Himalayan Research, 27 [2004] In all developing countries, the state, aided and supported by foreign donors, has held out the promise of development and tangible benefits to its citizens. Nearly always this has involved unprecedented interference in people's lives — which has provoked various forms of resistance in response. Resistance and the State: Nepalese Experiences uses ethnographic case studies to explore healthcare programmes, forestry, national parks, political parties, and ethnic revivalism. This fascinating and readable book also gives a graphic description of conflicts over the interpretation of history, and various perspectives on the Maoist insurgency that has taken control of large parts of rural Nepal since 1996. This is arguably the longest and most widespread Marxist rebellion that South Asia has known.

The contributors to this volume illuminate the complex relationship — sometimes wary, sometimes accommodative, and sometimes violent — between a modernizing, developmentalist state, and the people it professes to represent and benefit. This book will be of immense value both to experts — political scientists, historians, sociologists, and anthropologists — and to the general reader.