This article examines economic and social relations in order to understand political assertion and mobilisation among rural bonded labourers in the Pakistan Punjab. Bonded labour, characterised by economic and extra-economic forms of compulsion together with vertical ties of patronage, remains widespread in the region. I propose that the perpetuation of these relations is largely explained by the capture of state institutions by a traditional landlord elite and its monopoly over the means of coercion coupled with a highly seasonal demand for labour. I examine how employment and indebtedness combine to restrict workers' physical and economic mobility. I argue that labourers have not been able to unite politically as a class and challenge their employers because years of authoritarian rule in Pakistan have entrenched a highly factional style of politics dominated by the landed elites. My article contributes to the literature on agrarian change, class formation and the state in south Asia.

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Pakistan Eurasia landownership rural society political economy debt employment agrarian change South Asia Punjab [Pakistan] labor Asia