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Notes -
Like castrati for church choirs, is what it sounds like. Even officially banning the practice meant workarounds like "oh he had an accident where a bull crushed his testicles and they had to be removed" and other tall tales, and the desperate/poor would have a boy castrated in hopes he could become a high-earning singer (of course not everyone did).
There's a Tamil movie based on a novel which is in the vein of realism and is harrowing subject matter; it's about professional beggars, or rather the people who buy and sell them in gangs in order to profit off them. This includes buying disabled children, and if you can't buy them, then you create them by forcing the women to have children. (The movie shifts focus by adding in another alleged true-life story and makes the beggars the secondary plot).
This certainly isn't confined to India; it's been historically noted in the West, too; when you can make money by appealing to charity, then you get professional begging; and when the most sympathy is evoked by the most misery, then you have an incentive to get the most deformed and miserable to extort money out of the public. And to have organised gangs.
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