A Life in Public Service

Nepal from Autocracy to Democracy by the Former Minister of External Affairs of Nepal | Political Memoir & South Asian History

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In 1960, King Mahendra Shah summoned a twenty-four-year-old Nepali PhD student in California to serve as the Member Secretary of National Planning Council. In the extraordinary six-decade long career that followed, Bhekh Bahadur Thapa witnessed first-hand the enormous challenges, as well as the heartbreaks and triumphs, of nation-building in Nepal. He revisits those times, offering deeply personal observations into the transformation of his country, from a feudal protectorate under the rule of the Rana dynasty to its current-day manifestation as a boisterous federal democratic republic. An ‘insider-account’ in the truest sense, A Life in Public Service is a fascinating, intimate look at the modern-day governance of South Asia’s oldest nation.