Tulanarayan Shah, a researcher and head of Nepal Madhes Foundation, headed the discussion as the ´pundit´ for the day. Though the book was first published in 1975, the discussion focused on the relevance of the ideas brought forward in the book, through Gaige´s research on Nepal´s politics with reference to the Tarai region today.
There was an hour-long general summary of the main ideas introduced by the book, followed by a heated discussion between the participants and Shah.
"Gaige has accurately predicted, some thirty years ago the state that Nepal is in now in terms of the local and national level politics of the Tarai region," proclaimed Shah at the beginning of the discussion.
The discussion then turned to looking at what Gaige´s coined term of "Nepalisation" meant in the context when it was written, but more importantly, what it has meant for Nepal today.
There was a debate in regards to issues of linguistic unity, the policies of late king Mahendra, the negligence of the democratic state post 1990, and their effects on the Tarai belt as a root cause of the dissent and uprisings that followed in the past few years.
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