Journal of Contemporary Asia, Vol. 30, No. 4
"Make no mistake. This is some book. One of the best I have read for some time... The challenge of this book should be read, studied and appreciated by all scholars of labour, migration or development."
"a very important contribution to contemporary and historical studies of workers, and class relations into which they are inserted and against which many of them struggle"
International Review of Social History

Many works about agragarian change in the Third World assumes that unfree relations are to be eliminated in the course of capitalist development. This text argues that the incidence of bonded labour is greater than supposed, and that in certain situations rural employers prefer an unfree workforce.