Jaipur, March 22:

A village cooperative society in Rajasthan has devised a novel way to recover outstanding dues from defaulters - by hiring eunuchs to do the job!

The Namana village committee in Bundi district, over 180 km from here, came up with the ploy after several other ways failed to persuade the defaulters to pay up. The committee is now hoping to embarrass them into doing so.

“We had given loans of over Rs 6.5 million in the last 10 years, out of which Rs 1 million is still to be collected from 12 defaulters. And some of these cases are over 12 years old,” Kishan Chand Sharma, chairperson of the committee, said.

“We tried everything possible for recovery. However, despite many notices being served on them they did not clear the dues,” Sharma said.

As decided by the village body, four eunuchs would be pressed into service and be paid a daily commission on the collected funds.

Newspaper advertisements would be brought out to appoint the eunuchs, many of whom move around in bands collecting money from households where a baby has been born or where a wedding has been held.

This time though they are the harbinger of ill tidings.

According to Sharma, the appointed eunuchs will knock on the doors of the defaulters from morning till night. They will station themselves outside the houses until people deposit the outstanding money. “I feel this new method will be successful. The defaulters are likely to be embarrassed by the eunuchs waiting outside their houses.