Human Bondage: Tracing its Roots in India

This in-depth study of bonded labor with special focus on how the system exists in India provides  a detailed analysis of the historical, social, and cultural context in which bondage has developed. The author discusses the socio-economic characteristics that accompany bondage: caste, illiteracy, landlessness and land tenure issues, alienation of land, lack of skills, poor employment and wage conditions, indebtedness, migration, and globalization. Extreme forms of bondage, including child labor, trafficking in women and children, and social forms like devadasis and yoginis have also been covered.

The book is essentially about human freedom and dignity―the quintessence of human existence―and the forces that rob them, the dispossessed victims, consequences of dispossession, and ways and means of restoration.