In this book, Mythri Jegathesan attempts to expand the anthropological understandings of dispossession. In doing so, she draws attention to the political significance of gender in investment and placemaking, particularly in Sri Lanka, but also more generally in South Asia as well.

This detailed ethnography sheds considerable light on an otherwise invisible minority whose labour and collective heritage of dispossession as ‘coolies’ in colonial Ceylon are central to Sri Lanka’s recognition, economic growth and history as a post-colonial nation.