FIXED COST For birth of a boy: Rs 3,001 For birth of a girl:Rs 1,501 For a wedding: Rs 3,501

The next time you’re harassed by eunuchs demanding a five-figure sum for a birth in the family, ask for the rate card.

An organisation representing the third sex entered into a tentative agreement with representatives from the ruling party on Sunday, “fixing” the chanda that a newborn’s parents would have to pay to buy peace with eunuchs.

The rate card — prepared along predictable gender-divide lines and accepting that there was no other way out of the extortion ring — could read Rs 3,001 for baby boys and Rs 1,501 for baby girls. A price — Rs 3,501 — was fixed on weddings, as well.

The Paschimbanga Brihannala Samiti, a statewide organisation of eunuchs, entered into a “gentleman’s agreement” with the CPM member of Parliament (MP) from Howrah and a councillor from the same party in a bid to end the harassment of families celebrating the birth of a child.

The “agreement”— that could be viewed in some quarters as a move to legitimise extortion —would be implemented first in Howrah and then spread to the other urban areas, including Calcutta.

Neither MP Swadesh Chakraborty nor councillor Debasis Ghosh could explain why parents of newborns were not allowed a say in Sunday’s proceedings, under a hastily-erected shamiana on the grounds of Howrah Shiksha Sadan.

No one present at the function was going to play spoilsport. Instead, people’s representatives and eunuchs’ representatives spoke of the need to “come together” to solve a “social problem”, with each group striving to explain and elaborate its own problems.

From the people’s representatives, horror stories of extortion by eunuchs poured forth. “There have been so many incidents in the recent past where this extortion has resulted in violence,” councillor Ghosh said. But he went on to admit that eunuchs, “too”, were victims. “An agreement of this sort will help everyone,” he added.

MP Chakraborty was all for the agreement. “This will be beneficial to both harassed parents and poverty-stricken eunuchs,” said the former mayor of Howrah.

“Ours is a section that is not allowed a place in mainstream society,” said Samiti secretary Dipa Banerjee. “Our members find it very difficult to earn their keep and are forced to seek alms. But there are households that shut the doors on us,” she complained.

Demanding that the “malpractice” of people “misbehaving with us” be stopped, she welcomed the agreement reached on Sunday, but warned that “these rates must not be lowered”.