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The third sex take on the tax dodgers
From Sydney Morning Herald
June 24, 2012
http://www.smh.com.au/world/the-third-sex-take-on-the-tax-dodgers-20120623-20uzf.html
Legal recognition for Pakistan’s transgender community has changed their role in society, writes Jon Boone in Karachi.
In a bright pink salwar kameeez and matching headscarf, Nargis marches around one of Pakistan’s richest neighbourhoods on a mission to embarrass residents into paying their taxes.
Armed with a bundle of paperwork, the 32-year-old raps on the gate of a mansion whilst a pick-up truck full of guards and tax officials remains at a distance.
The householder who answers grins nervously at Nargis, who is a ”hijra” – a member of Pakistan’s increasingly assertive transgender community. With a sheepish look to see whether anyone is watching from the street, the owner meekly accepts a bill for outstanding property tax and municipal fees.
Given his effusive promises to pay, there is no need for what Qazi Aftab, the head of tax collection for the Clifton Cantonment Board in Karachi, calls ”the nuclear option” – clapping, shouting and making a scene. ”Because of the neighbours they get very embarrassed,” he said. ”Usually just one minute of shouting is enough and then they pay up.”
It’s more mortifying on an ordinary day, when groups of four hijras exercise their powers of persuasion on the doorsteps of Karachi, where there is a tradition of rich and well-connected residents ignoring tax demands.
The authorities are extremely pleased with their efforts to combat the tax dodgers. Aftab says recovery rates are up 15 per cent from when conventional tax collectors clashed violently with householders. That never happens with the hijras, he said.
For centuries, hijras in South Asian society have been both respected and exploited. Their blessings on a newborn child are regarded as propitious, while the curses of hijra beggars are to be avoided. But their work as entertainers, dancers and beggars often transmutes into prostitution.
Several hours after Nargis has finished her rounds, a gang of hijras in a nearby market work evening crowds of men going to restaurants, a licensed beer store and a gun shop. They hold out their hands, as if begging. If they sense a potential customer, they’ll quietly try to negotiate a price for sex.
”Begging and sex work is not an honourable job,” says Nirma, a thickset 30-year-old wearing heavy eye make-up and a green sari. But she claims to earn up to $31 a customer and is not impressed by the tax collectors’ $139 a month salary. But times are tough, Nirma concedes.
Although some claim to be born into the third sex, most hijras are cross-dressers or pay up to $600 to be surgically castrated. Also available from surgeons prepared to risk performing the unlawful operations are breast implants costing up to $970.
Full sex-change procedures can be illegally obtained but, according to one hijra, are too risky in Pakistan.
Hijras usually live in groups with their ”gurus”, men who are part protectors, part business managers – many would say pimps. Harassment, rape and violence is a problem. A 2009 incident in which a group of wedding dancers were raped by police prompted the supreme court to try and improve their lot, giving hijras the right to vote and recognition as a separate gender on ID cards.
A court order that the government should find jobs for hijras that exploited their ”special skills” led Karachi to set up the tax collecting scheme.
Not everyone in the transgendered community is impressed by the debt collecting initiative, which is soon to be emulated in Punjab province. ”It’s just so demeaning,” says Natasha. ”It’s no different from begging.”
The 22-year-old wears tight jeans and a sleeveless shirt rather than more traditional women’s clothes. She sees herself as the face of a modern form of the hijra tradition. She has given up having sex for money.
Because of the supreme court initiative, she now works as an assistant supervisor at a branch of the national ID card agency. ”It means I live like a normal human being,” she said.
But Natasha is disappointed by the unwillingness of hijras to give up lucrative prostitution. Many, she says, are not interested in their new rights, including the ID card carrying the word transgender. ”We are calling like hell to them to come and get their cards,” she said. ”I feel like a fool for fighting for them.”
Guardian News & Media
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/the-third-sex-take-on-the-tax-dodgers-20120623-20uzf.html#ixzz1yfOgt3QJ
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3 Replies
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The original article from The Guardian, which the Sydney Mourning Horrid copied almost entirely.
Moderator
Quote:I’ve deleted the rest of this article copy as you will see that the SMH did acknowledge the article was from Guardian news & media. -
CNN article on the subject, dated 14th April 2011.
Pakistan’s transgender tribe of tax collectors
By Nick Paton Walsh, CNN
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
[ul]In Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, authorities employ “transgender” tax collectors.
They are sent out with the aim of embarrassing debtors into paying up.
Barely 1 per cent of Pakistanis pay any income tax.[/ul]video – http://cnn.com/video/?/video/world/2011/04/14/walsh.pakistan.transgender.cnn
Karachi, Pakistan (CNN) — Miss your tax deadline in the United States this weekend, and you might get a nasty letter at your door. In Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, you might get Riffee and the gang. They are “transgender” tax collectors — whose weapons include flamboyancy, surprise — and a little lipstick.
In a move that speaks volumes about the lengths to which Pakistan is going to tackle tax evasion, Karachi officials are using Riffee – who like many people in South Asia works under a single name – and her team as enforcers with a difference. They are sent to the businesses or houses of debtors. The aim — in this very conservative Muslim society — to embarrass tax debtors into paying up.
Riffee — like her tax-collector friends Sana and Kohan — is physically a man, but prefers to be called and dress as a woman. Their job is quite simple: each morning they turn up to work and get a list of missed payments. One by one, they make house-calls, causing trouble at each debtor’s home or office, trying to get them to pay up. It’s not clear how effective this tactic is, but officials insist they would not do it if it did not work.
“Their appearance causes great embarrassment amongst the people,” said Sajid Hussein Bhatti, the tax superintendent who gives Riffee her orders every morning.
When Riffee was a 10-year-old boy, she decided she wanted to be a woman. Since then, she says, she’s endured plenty of prejudice. “We’re trying to educate society and show them how we like ourselves, but if your parents don’t understand you or give you respect, how can you expect other people to?”
A Pakistani court ruling two years ago gave eunuchs — men who have been castrated — the right to be referred to as a “third gender.” Riffee believes the same right should extend to her and her friends, although they have not been castrated.
We followed them as they visit a series of electrical appliance shops. The first debtor insists there’s been a mistake and the bill’s been paid. The second is less amenable, so the team threaten to come back 24 hours later, half a dozen strong — and dance in the shop. That just may be enough to get a tax bill settled.
There is a serious side though to this theatrical tactic. Pakistan’s tax take is dire: barely 1 per cent of Pakistanis pay any income tax, and the government is frantically trying to increase its income — partially to placate the International Monetary Fund. Pakistan wants to borrow up to another $5 billion from the IMF, which insists the state improves its tax collection.
The government is seriously indebted — and only 1.9 million people in a country of 170 million filed tax returns at all last year. By some estimates 10 million people are registered to pay taxes in Pakistan; the great majority don’t pay a rupee.
In a country where many say the courts are weak and the police corruptible, Riffee and the team are a last, albeit striking, resort.
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I read the Guardian article a few days ago and originally came away thinking well it’s a good thing the hijra now have some formal recognition. On re-reading I noticed more Natasha’s disappointment in the limited number of girls taking up the opportunity to have their third gender status recognised.
This leads me to ponder are all the hijra living that life because they are transgendered or is it actually an economic alternative where no other exists? Do some transgendered individuals choose not to take up the new ID cards because it will limit their economic opportunities because at the end of the day Natasha has been one of the lucky ones to find a “mainstream” job that pays reasonably well? (probably better than a tax office employee but less than a prostitute). How many other transgendered Pakistanis are still closeted because if they do not fit the hijra paradigm they are still not accepted in Pakistan?
It jolted me into realising that the world of the hijra was far more complex than I had anticipated. Some degree of liberation may have made it more complex.
Anyone found any other reading on the hijra or other TG groups in other societies in their wanderings?
