NEW DELHI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Discrimination, housing and the effect of COVID-19 are the most sensitive priorities of India’s new National Transgender Council, two trans members said Tuesday.
India is considered a world leader in its efforts to improve the lives of some 2 million trans people, who face prejudice in this largely conservative country and basically through begging, wedding performance or sex promotion.
“Stigma and discrimination are components of the spinal cord,” said Laxmi Narayan Tripathi, one of India’s top trans leaders and board member, whom he described as “historic.”
“We want to come to the paintings with a wonderful defense plan to end this,” he told the Thomson Reuters Tripathi Foundation, who was a petitioner in a 2014 landmark court ruling that identified other trans people as a third sex with equivalent rights.
Other trans people are denied access to employment, education and physical care, three spaces that Tripathi, founder of the Asia-Pacific transgender network, has highlighted, along with housing.
The council aims to achieve some equality through the advice and monitoring of government policies and the “redress of grievances” of trans people, in accordance with a 2019 law on the rights of trans people, which provided for its creation.
Led by the Minister of Social Justice, the council will be composed of representatives from a dozen federal departments and departments, adding health, housing and employment, and state governments, as five trans representatives.
But the members knew what formal powers, if any, would have the board.
Some expect the council to take into consideration the effect of the new coronavirus on trans people, who have been among those most affected during India’s close months, which has ended the sex trade, marriages and passenger trains, a popular site to beg.
“While some government systems have helped them, pensions and food rations, others have not,” said Meera Parida, who chairs the All Odisha Third Gender Welfare Fund and a board member.
Parida said it would do so to make it less difficult for other trans people affected by the pandemic to access government systems such as affordable housing and rents.
The council already faces complaints from some in the trans community, a few days after their training.
Anindya Hajra, a trans woman working with LGBT-Pratyay Gender Trust, said she did not adequately constitute other transecons of declining and socioeconomically disadvantaged castes.
“(The board) is a validation of the bureaucratic excavator procedure of our lives and reports and on our behalf,” he said.
Independent trans activist Karthik Bittu Kondaiah also criticized the variety of clubs procedure as “undemocratic” and lack of transparency.
Tripathi said other trans people from all walks of life would be able to join the board because the member had a three-year term.
Reporting through Annie Banerji @anniebanerji, edited through Katy Migiro; Please mention the Thomson Reuters Foundation, Thomson Reuters’ charitable arm, which covers the lives of others around the world struggling to live freely or justly. Visit http://news.trust.org
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