Gabriele Parussini wrote about a creative strategy to get people to cough up tax money:

• One municipal commissioner in India’s financial capital, Mumbai, has started sending drummers that publicly sing and ask individuals, who are delinquent on their taxes, to pay up.
• This is a desperate problem in a country where only 3% of the people pay taxes making it difficult to invest in things like infrastructure and education.
• Since the strategy was implemented tax revenues in the suburb have risen by 20%.
• It didn’t all come as a direct result of the drummers. Some saw it happen to people they know and they preemptively paid their taxes in order to avoid the drummers.
• Some worry that over time, as people get used to seeing the drummers, the drummers will lose their effectiveness.
• Which is why the person who came up with the strategy is planning to escalate and use dancing transgendered women – known as hijras in India – once it seems like the drums are no longer effective.

Read more here.

Source: The Wall Street Journal

Via: Marginal Revolution