ForbiddenKnowledgeTV
Alexandra Bruce
June 13, 2012
Extreme poverty, lack of education and scant livelihood opportunities have for generations forced hundreds of families in the nondescript arid town of Kadiri in India’s Andhra Pradesh to rely on beedi rolling as their only means of survival.
Slum clusters in Kadiri have become open-air factories of domestic tobacco industry where women and girls as young as five daily roll tons of tobacco into cigarettes with bare hands and sharp knives.
They live in crammed, unhygienic conditions; work in oppressive heat; inhale harmful tobacco vapors; and absorb large amounts of nicotine through skin contact.
