Eunuchs, Taxes, Oh My!
posted by Dave Hoffman
DANCING and singing eunuchs are knocking on doors in the Indian city of Patna in a bid to embarrass shopkeepers into paying their taxes.The shock strategy, in which sari-clad and heavily made up eunuchs accompany officials on their rounds of crowded shopping areas in a country notorious for tax evasion and non-payment, has been declared a success.
“Some paid in cash, while others quickly wrote checks. The shock therapy, which we plan to use sparingly, was a grand success,” Atul Prasad, a top official in impoverished Bihar state, of which Patna is the capital, said.
The novel tax-collection technique kicked off last week with boisterous eunuchs loudly demanding that mortified shopkeepers pay up – to the bemusement of scores of onlookers.
Taxmen pocketed 425,000 rupees ($12,484) from defaulters in a few hours.
1. I like lots of things about the story, including the nice agency cost angle, and the eunuchs’ catchy song: “Pay the tax, pay the Patna Municipal Corporation tax!” But I wonder: why are there still eunuchs?
2. What is the American variant of this strategy? Sending in a passel of reality television stars?
(h/t: The Corner)
November 16, 2006 at 9:13 am
Posted in: Current Events
Print This Post
Responses (2)
Christine Hurt - November 16, 2006 at 9:50 am
Have you ever read A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry? The novel is set during the “emergency policies” of 1970s India. One of the protagonists consents to a vasectomy under the state’s birth control plan and comes out a eunoch. I don’t know if the author was trying to depict a common occurrence under the birth control plan or a freak occurrence.
BTD_Venkat - November 16, 2006 at 10:21 am
I find these types of stories annoying, but then again I am of Indian origin! I could trudge to rural America and other countries and find all sorts of crazy stuff (as does Borat). But the national and international press seems to pick on India as some sort of backwater to point out these quirky cute and backward ways of dealing with things that must surely pervade the country.
Fine Balance was awesome (but I’m advised that the incident you mention Christine is not representative, and it too, annoyed me). I guess it would be like asking if someone writing about lynching was depicting a common or freak occurrence. And I would guess it would have been more common at some point than the plan in a Fine Balance.
Leave a Reply