India: Vasectomy for gun licence deal sours

Story here. Excerpt:

'Vasectomy has always been an unpopular operation in the dacoit*-infested Chambal district of Madhya Pradesh, but it enjoyed a brief surge in popularity last year.

More than 250 men put their private parts under the surgeon’s knife through 2008; this, in a place where the male sterilisation figure had never reached double figures in the past 20 years.

They had an incentive: the government, in the form of Shivpuri District Collector Manish Shrivastava, had promised them an arms license each if they underwent the operation. They did so in family planning camps where forms for gun licenses were made available.

All of these men are a disillusioned lot now. Their vas deferens’ have been sacrificed, but the promised gun licenses haven’t come.
....
He says no one is ready to come to family planning camps any more. Moreover, “people are calling us cheats”, he says.'

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* "dacoit" - outlaw, criminal