Scorching heat and barren lands mark the landscape of Kadiri, a town in Anantapur district in Andhra Pradesh. Much like Kadiri’s landscape, its people have been living a parched existence. The town has been struggling with drought for 18 years now; the main source of livelihood in Kadiri is farming and agriculture, and for a better of the last several decades, Anantapur has been struggling with an agrarian crisis.
Kadiri’s largely rain-fed farming economy has come under severe pressure due to a combination of several factors including a lack of alternative livelihood options. Reeling under poverty, mounting debt and government apathy, farmers have been driven to extreme measures. In 2016, over 800 farmers committed suicide.
And women and children in the families of those who have committed suicide have become vulnerable to trafficking.
The Rural and Environment Development Society (REDS) a 22-year-old NGO working on rural development, sustainable agriculture, child rights and anti-trafficking in Anantapur, found that the problem has become prevalent across the Anantapur-Kadapa-Chittoor belt, which are among those severely affected by the agrarian crisis. Local brokers of flesh trade and traffickers prey on women and young persons who are looking for alternative ways to support their families. Including the people they rescued and those who were able to return, the NGO says that in between 2005 and 2011, there were 1240 cases of trafficking from 10 mandals in this belt. Many who are trafficked and forced into sex work are young children.
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