INDIA: India's eastern Bihar state has begun exploiting local prejudice against eunuchs as a way of recovering overdue municipal taxes from defaulting shopkeepers.
On their first day on the job yesterday, the garishly dressed and outlandishly behaved tax collectors proved successful collecting Rs425,000 (€7,700) in back taxes.
Dancing and singing to the beat of drums, about 20 eunuchs went from shop to shop demanding that the owners pay their outstanding dues or face "special treatment", which can reduce the bravest and the most shameless into submission.
They were accompanied by revenue officials with tax records to instantly settle the arrears. "We are confident that their reputation and persuasive skills will come in handy to collect taxes from defaulters," Bharat Sharma, a city revenue officer said confidently.
The eunuchs are not paid a salary and instead receive 4 per cent of the amount collected from defaulters, municipal administrator Atul Prasad said, adding that they are likely to be dragooned into helping the authorities collect outstanding taxes from private homes soon.
Eunuchs in India are easy to recognise by their exaggerated, rough looks and outlandish behaviour. All dress like women, wearing ill-fitting skimpy blouses and saris tied low, all set off by gaudy costume jewellery. A large number of them are gay men who, in a traditional society not sympathetic to homosexuality, find it easier to pose as eunuchs.
All eunuch faces are garishly painted and through constantly chewing betel leaf, their lips and mouth are a permanent slash of ochre red.
Almost all of them shave and they are highly physical in company, constantly touching, pinching either the cheek or bottom or simply lunging straight for the abdomen, especially with non-eunuchs.
They are part of a bizarre freemasonry that sustains itself through collecting money by dancing outside houses of newly-born babies in the hope that they may turn out to be hermaphrodites.
The large part of their earnings, however, emanate from intimidating and embarrassing people on the streets by their outrageous behaviour, obscene language and vulgar gestures. Most happily pay up to be left alone rather than suffer public humiliation.
The eunuchs operate in small groups and inter-clan buying and selling of novitiates is common. This follows fierce, often violent bargaining between "mummys" or clan heads, invariably with underworld links.
Eunuchs sustain their numbers by kidnapping young boys and castrating them with a razor in a secret and barbaric ritual presided over by the clan mummy. Some are known not to have survived this ritual, activists working to better the lot of eunuchs claim.
In recent years, however, India's eunuchs have somewhat reinvented themselves as debt collectors hired by businessmen and even by some banks and other financial institutions.