India, May 13 -- In the annals of sharecropper exploitation in India, the plight of Indra Lohar must rank among the most shocking. Lohar laboured under landowning masters for two decades but at the close of the 1971-72 winter harvest, was told to vacate. Stunned, with no other livelihood, he offered to pay more but was rebuffed. He filed a complaint with the magistrate, but even as the case was pending, police raided his home, the landlord's goons thrashed him, and he was forced to press his thumb on blank paper, later produced in court as proof of withdrawal of claims. Playing out in the turbulent run-up to the 1972 assembly election and documented by political scientist Dwaipayan Bhattacharya, Lohar's case was so egregious that a West B...