Worried over the lowest ever birth and death registration figures in Bihar, the state government has decided to engage eunuchs and traditional cremation workers called ‘doms’ to improve birth and death registration rates in the state, officials said.
The government has previously used the services of eunuchs successfully to recover taxes from habitual defaulters in Bihar.
“Eunuchs visiting families on auspicious occasions like births is an age-old tradition. Their visits would be more fruitful if they can be engaged to improve the birth registration rate in the state,” said Vijay Prakash, principal secretary of the Planning and Development Department.
He added: “For ages, eunuchs have been known for collecting information about the birth of children in different localities in each village, town and district.”
“The government will use these very networks of eunuchs soon in encouraging the families to register their newborn babies with the government to avail several benefits under several welfare schemes,” Vijay Prakash said.
According to officials, 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.
Prakash said the 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.
A few measures have been launched to achieve 100 percent registration of births by 2015, Prakash said. These include preparation of a handy manual to provide answers to all questions related to challenges faced in achieving the target, capacity building to train the people concerned, including 80,000 anganwadi sewikas, to develop centralised common reporting system (CCRS) on birth registration to overcome duplication, linking of government and private nursing homes with the CCRS to provide information regarding every new birth, and launch of a massive awareness programme.
Chandni Hijra, a leader of the eunuchs, said: “We have suffered a lot for centuries and most of us live in abject poverty. We want restoration of our recognition on the pattern of the Mughal era,” she said referring to eunuchs being used as palace guards by the Mughals.
The government will engage the dom community, virtually condemned by their caste to do cremation work, for improving death registration.
“We would take their help because they traditionally used to perform important rituals during cremation. They also used to have knowledge of deaths in their area. This will improve death registration,” Prakash said.