Pitamber Sharma is a former Professor in the Department of Geography at Tribhuvan University. He has served as a Regional Planner with the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) and as Vice-Chair of Nepal’s National Planning Commission. He has authored several works, including Urbanization in Nepal (1989), Tourism as Development (2000), Market Towns in the Hindu-Kush Himalayas (2002), Unravelling the Mosaic: Spatial Aspects of Ethnicity in Nepal (2008), Towards a Federal Nepal: An Assessment of Proposed Models (2009), and Some Aspects of Nepal’s Social Demography: Census 2011 Update (2014). He has been a research fellow at the University of Hawaii, USA, and holds a PhD in City and Regional Planning from Cornell University, USA.