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Central and south Asian brick kilns have long attracted the attention of humanitarian agencies, activists and scholars as sites of severe labour exploitation. Brick kiln workers are routinely described as ‘modern-day slaves’ in need of rescue. But we need to go beyond this simplistic ‘victim paradigm’ in order to understand the social nature of bondage as well as to situate that bondage within both local and global systems of domination and dependence. This is what I propose to do over the next 1000 words, using a case study of the brick kilns I researched in the Pakistani areas of Gujrat, Islamabad, and Rawalpindi in 2015 and 2016. First, however, we must understand the crucial role of debt as an engine of capitalism, as well as the ways in which it restricts the choices of nominally ‘free’ labour.
Debt bondage and the rise of Indian capitalism
Scholars of south Asia are divided over when and how capitalism first took root in colonial India (of which Pakistan was formerly part), yet most agree that it was already a reality by the late nineteenth century. One of its hallmarks was the growth of long working hours for low hourly wages in agriculture and industry, propelled by the imposition of debt.
