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Barbara Adams has lived in Nepal for 45 years. She is a staunch nationalist, and as a result, a server and passionate critic. This book contains her observations of the failings of what come to be called “democrazy” in Nepal, and her suggestions of what should be done to satisfy and engage the ever more discouraged youth. She observed the disintegration of the golden grail of multiparty democracy, and the increasing corruption of its proponents. She criticized without fear, and sometimes too passionately for the comfort of those she attacked, and was thrown out of Nepal for six months by Girija Prasad Koirala, whom she felt, and wrote, and betrayed Nepal, democracy, and the village-oriented socialism of his brother, the beloved BP Koirala. She was one of the first political observers to recognize the importance of the Maoist movement in Nepal, and to write about it sympathetically. She had always been on the side of the poor and innocent villagers and of the idealistic urban youth who flock to her house with their tales for desperation and discouragement. She understands why many of them have since jointed the Maoists. In recent years she has had a weekly column in a leftist weekly, Jana Astha. The column is under the heading: “Note of dissent” Barbara is a dissenter, original in her thoughts, but always writing with the welfare of Nepal in mind. For the last years she has been involved in peace campaigns in Kathmandu, Hetaura, Rajbiraj and other rural areas. In many places in Kathmandu she is greeted, as “Shanti Didi”. Barbara Loves Nepal and Nepal reciprocates.
Born in New York, Barbara Adams grew up in Washington DC, where her father, an economist, held a series of jobs with FDR’s new Deal. Both shy and rebellious as a child, she eschewed conventional education in Washington’s public schools and spent her days riding and grooming horses and her evenings voraciously reading. She studies French and Russian at the Georgetown International Relations from George Washington University. Anguished by the gap between haves and have nots which she experienced during a mid-term trip to Haiti, she left America immediately after graduation on an odyssey through Europe, the Middle East and India, selling feature articles to finance her travels, which included walking with Vinobha Bhave in the Punjab. In 1961 Barbara settled in Nepal, and with Prince Basundara and Gen. Sharada Sumsher J.B. Rana, Opened Third Eye Tours,, Nepal’s first travel Agency. She traveled much of the world promoting tourism to still unknown Nepal, worked with Nepali craft promotion and design and became and expert on Bhutanese textiles about which she wrote a book. For oblivious reasons Barbara avoided writing about politics. That changed with the advent of democracy: She started her column, Barbara’s Beat, in the Independent in 1991, then moved it to the Kathmandu Post, the Everest Herald, and lastly the People’s Review. Other columns were published in Jana Asstha. Barbara became and environmental, economic, political, and human rights activist and was twice “exiled” from her adopted country for expressing her views.