Lineages of the ‘labour question’: from ‘subaltern workers’ to ‘classes of labour’ in the Punjab canal colonies

ABSTRACT This article charts the historical emergence of an 'agrarian question of labour' in one zone of the global south: the canal colonies of Punjab, Pakistan. It maps the factors through which diverse types of workers were subsumed under a three-tier labour regime on the region's large estates and highlights the forces that dampened the potential for solidarity between workers, allowing landlords to reconfigure them into classes of labour in the postcolonial era. It thus underscores the importance of tracing the rural roots of contemporary ‘informality’ than focusing solely on the informalization of formal wage labour.