Bonded Histories: Genealogies of Labor Servitude in Colonial India.

In India during the mid 1970s the phenomenon of bonded labour contracts -- whereby an agricultural labourer was obliged to work for an employer, usually a landlord, over an indefinite period until a past loan plus interest had been liquidated -- came to occupy a prominent place in the public eye, albeit all too briefly. This culminated in national legislation enacted in 1976 formally outlawing the practice. Academics, particularly Marxist economists, also became interested in examining the causes and incidence of bondage. Unfortunately, both policy initiative and scholarly enquiry quickly became sidetracked: because of subsequent political change the Act had no realistic chance …