Himal Books

Sudhindra Sharma is Director at Interdisciplinary Analysts, a non-governmental research organisation based in Kathmandu. A sociologist by training, he received his higher education from Tribhuvan University (Nepal), Ateneo de Manila University (the Philippines) and the University of Tampere (Finland). He has been a visiting scholar at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Helsinki, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi, and the Institute of Asian Studies, Bangkok. He is the author of Procuring Water: Foreign Aid and Rural Water Supply in Nepal (2001). Besides foreign aid issues in Nepal, he has focused on religions, namely Hinduism and Islam, and on social change in Nepal. Sharma is also associated with the Immersion Course on Contemporary Social Issues organised under the aegis of the Social Science Baha, Kathmandu.

Juhani Koponen is Professor of Development Studies at the University of Helsinki, Finland. With a background in journalism, and training as a historian, his academic research has focussed on Tanzanian development history and, more recently, on Finnish and Nordic development aid. His books include Development for Exploitation: German Colonial Policies in Mainland Tanzania 1884-1914 (1994) and (as editor) Beyond Integration and Exclusion. Impacts of Global-isation in Developing Countries—Mozambique, Nepal, Tanzania and Vietnam (forthcoming). His broader research interests cover development discourse and global history. Koponen is presently also Director of the Institute of Development Studies, University of Helsinki.

Dipak Gyawali is a member of the Royal Academy of Science and Technology, the co-editor of the journal Water Nepal, and a founding member of the Institute for Social and Environmental Transition (Boulder and Kathmandu). A water resource engineer and resource economist by training, he was educated at the Moskovsky Energetichesky Institute (former USSR) and the University of California, Berkeley (USA). He has been a guest scholar and researcher at the East-West Centre, Hawaii, Queen Elizabeth House in Oxford, the London School of Economics and the International Environment Academy in Switzerland. His interests include interdisciplinary research on the interface between technology and society as related to water and energy issues. He is the author of Rivers, Technology and Society: Learning the Lessons of Water Management in Nepal (2003) published jointly by Zed Books and Himal Books. He has written extensively on natural resource management, technology and societal change. Gyawali also served briefly as Nepal’s water resources minister in 2002-2003.

Founder of Nepal Water Conservation Foundation and editor of Water Nepal, Ajaya Dixit taught hydraulics and water resources engineering at Tribhuvan University’s Institute of Engineering until 1989. Dixit received his education at the Regional Engineering College, Rourkela, India, and the University of Stratchclyde, Glasgow. He has worked extensively as an analyst on water resources and environmental issues in Nepal and South Asia. He currently serves as chairman of the board of directors of Nepal Water for Health (NEWAH). Dixit was a member of Nepal’s Water and Energy Commission from 1993 to 1997. He has written extensively on water, environment and developmental issues, and is the author of Basic Water Science (2003). He has also co-edited Rethinking the Mosaic: Investigations into Local Water Management (1999); The Fluid Mosaic: Water Governance in the Context of Variability, Uncertainty and Change (2003); and Flood Problems and Management in South Asia (2003).