In Pakistan, the revolt against serfdom is unfolding in the southern half of Sindh, an arid province whose agricultural bounties flow from the canals that snake to the Indus River. Fields of wheat stretch for miles and miles, dotted by the grass shacks and mud huts that house the laborers who work the land. Historically, farming in Sindh has been sustained by sharecropping, an antiquated system in which laborers receive little or no wages but split the harvest with the landlord. According to lawyers and human-rights workers, the landlords of Sindh have long exploited their workers by lending them money and holding them prisoner until the loans are repaid. High interest rates ensure that the peasants rarely pay off their debts.
Peasants move from one plantation to the next as their loans are sold from one landlord to another.
Under the prodding of human-rights workers, police in 1995 raided a plantation in southern Sindh and freed 67 laborers who were tied up and chained together. Of the estimated 7,500 bonded laborers who have escaped or been released since then, human-rights workers say, they have found several hundred tied up or in chains. Only flour and chilies. Now, Bheel lives in a colony of runaway serfs. He has the leathery palms of a laborer and the crazy eyes of a man on the run.