Earlier this week, a property owner who owed thousands of dollars in back taxes challenged two drummers who were playing for more than an hour outside his upmarket home in central Bangalore.
But that cooled neither the drummers' ardour nor enthusiasm for their hour-long performance, for which they were paid 1000 rupees ($26).
Another indignant office premises tax defaulter threatened to go to court to stop the drummers from performing outside his property, as they were disastrous for business.
"What rules permit them [civic officials] to make public announcements about me?
"Why have they not served notice on me regarding the drum-beating? This is not justifiable and I will go to court," he declared irately.
"First I thought it was some street play taking place, but then I realised what it really was," said local resident Roshin Varghese. She said it was a crude method but supposed it could prove effective.
Similar tactics have been adopted successfully by other civic bodies across India to force errant tax evaders to make good on their payments.
Years ago they exploited local prejudice against outlandishly dressed eunuchs in the eastern Bihar state as a way of recovering overdue municipal taxes from defaulting shopkeepers in the provincial capital Patna.
Dancing and singing raucously to drum beats, groups of eunuchs went from shop to shop demanding the owners pay their dues or face "special treatment" which could reduce even the bravest and the most shameless tax avoiders into craven submission. The eunuchs were accompanied by revenue officials with tax records to instantly settle the arrears, which were recovered in large measure and with a percentage paid to the scary enforcers.
Loan sharks in Mumbai also use eunuchs to recover dues from recidivist clients with great success.
Eunuchs in India are easy to recognise by their exaggerated, rough looks and outlandish behaviour.
All dress like women, wearing ill-fitting skimpy blouses and saris tied low, which is set off by gaudy costume jewellery.
A large number of them, however, are gay men who in a traditional society not sympathetic to homosexuality find it easier to pose as eunuchs.
All eunuch faces are painted garishly and through constant chewing of the betel leaf, their lips are a permanent slash of ochre red.
Almost all of them shave and they are highly physical with other people, constantly touching and pinching either the cheek or bottom, or simply lunging straight for the abdomen, especially with non-eunuchs.
They are part of a freemasonry that sustains itself through collecting money by dancing outside houses of newly born babies in the hope that they may be born intersexed.
But the large part of their earnings emanate from intimidating and embarrassing people on the streets with outrageous behaviour, obscene language and vulgar gestures.
Most of those harassed would rather pay to be left alone than suffer public humiliation.
These eunuchs operate in small groups and inter-clan buying and selling of novitiates is common.
This follows fierce bargaining between "Mummys", or clan heads, with underworld links.
