Unlike other countries eunuchs live a life on the borderline of society in India. They are also called as Hijrah. They are castrated males or biological developmental failure of sexuality. While Mughal  era exploited them as keepers of their harem today they are a desperate tribe trying to find dignity in human existence. While we talk and debate about human rights, we have completely ignored them. A large number of them are now often seen as beggars at traffic lights in New Delhi. I do not know if there is any plan by any Government or institution to find their restitution in society. Presently they are dressed as a parody of womanhood and sing/dance in most awkward manner on the occasion of birth of new-born or marriages. Very often they stoop to the extent of extortion by creating noise or ugly scene on such occasions to extort money. The stories about their tribes and inter se power struggles, over territories or other issues, keep appearing in newspaper. In this background while failing to do anything for their rehabilitation  the provincial Government of Bihar has decided to use eunuchs to improve birth registration:

Eunuchs on the roads

“Under the new plan, eunuchs will visit families of newborn children with birth certificate forms provided by the government and request them to get them filled up for registration. …. government will pay some honorarium to the eunuchs for the service. The idea to use eunuchs and their networks surfaced at a workshop here last year. …. In Bihar, the birth registration figure is only 36 percent, one of the lowest in the country. In line with the UN Convention on Child Rights held in 1989, every country was to achieve 100 percent registration of all births by 2010. The target year has been extended to 2015. (extracted from: http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_bihar-to-use-eunuchs-to-improve-birth-registration_1658239)”

Thus exploiting the eunuchs for its own statistical purpose, the Government has implicitly sanctioned their miserable way of living on the sidelines of society. Who said that creativity is overrated? Perhaps me.  For the record there were some earlier reports from the year 2009 that Bihar Government was trying to rehabilitate them by providing jobs etc., (see here) but we do not know what happened to those efforts.

@ author