Explore the hidden world of extra-legal finance in Northern India with ‘Debt, Trust and Reputation.’ This insightful book, published by Cambridge University Press, delves into the complex financial landscape that emerged as colonial rule attempted to regulate markets. Discover how these regulatory efforts inadvertently pushed credit and debt relations into informal, extra-legal realms, creating a space where traditional trust and reputation became the currency. “Debt, Trust and Reputation” combines historical analysis with ethnographic research to challenge modernization assumptions, revealing how these reputational economies of debt, despite their origins, became more exploitative than their predecessors. An essential read for understanding the socioeconomic responses to financial modernization in postcolonial India and the enduring power of informal finance.