Transgender Rights in India: From Progressive Laws to Ground Realities

India has made significant strides in acknowledging transgender people’s rights. However, as argued in a recent piece in The Hindu titled “Trans People Deserve Better,” published on September 23, 2025, politics is not paper labour but rather life itself. Even while dignity has been upheld by the Constitution and the courts, discrimination still occurs in businesses, hospitals, schools, and society at large.

Legal Framework

The NALSA Judgment, 2014

• It recognized transgender persons as “third gender.”
• It affirmed self-identification of gender without medical proof.
• Also directed states to extend reservations, education, and welfare benefits .
  

Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019

• It completely recognizes “self-perceived gender identity.”
• This act prohibits discrimination in education, healthcare, employment, housing for transgenders.
• It also criticized for requiring certificates from a District Magistrate, undermining NALSA’s principle of self-ID.

Schemes and Institutions

• SMILE scheme (2022):It includes scholarships, skill training centres, shelter homes (in the name of “Garima Greh”) and gender-affirming healthcare support .
• National Portal for Transgender Persons (2020) has been launched for online certification and welfare linkages for them .
• Equal Opportunity Policy (2024) has been started by Govt of India that mandates pronoun respect, unisex toilets, grievance redressal in government offices .

Implementation Gaps

• Administrative hurdles: complex certification, delays, corruption are the main hurdles for execution of all privileges.
• Scattered accountability: The involvement of multiple ministries and weak monitoring councils leads to no sole accountability.
• Poor grievance redressal: anti-discrimination clauses rarely enforced and led to their district into the system
• Data deficit: Census 2011 recorded 4.88 lakh transgender persons —widely seen as an undercount.

Ground Realities

Education

• Nearly 60% dropout rate due to bullying and stigma faced by all of them leading to their low literate rate .
• Literacy among transgender persons is ~46% compared to the national average of ~74%.It signals comparatively slow progress of this sect.

Healthcare

• PLOS study (2024) shows hospitals remain binary, exclusionary spaces and this discrimination leads to ill healthcare .
• Mis-gendering, denial of care, and humiliation by staff are common.This heavily impacts their mental and physical health.
• One-quarter of trans persons report being denied medical treatment and this report shows their current status of acceptance in the society at large..

Employment

• 96% of transgender job applicants are denied work according to a national survey.
• Theyare forced into begging or sex work by the so called care takers of the society.
• Positive steps: Tata Steel and other companies hiring transgender employees .

Social Welfare and Safety

• Over 90% of this trans population report daily abuse .
• Family rejection leads to homelessness and low morale in their lives.
• Welfare schemes underutilized due to lack of ID or their awareness of their granted rights.

Global Comparison

• Pakistan (2018 law): The Transgenders law(2018) in Pakistan allows identification as male, female, both, or neither .
• Nepal (2007 judgment): This Judgement affirmed non-binary category with full self-ID .
• Many Western nations (Argentina, Canada, Denmark) allow legal gender change purely by declaration, without medical or administrative hurdles.

India’s framework is progressive but still bureaucratic, falling short of global self-determination standards.

The Indian transgender community has constitutional recognition, but not equal dignity. As The Hindu emphasises, representation must be structural, not symbolic. To move forward, India must enforce laws, invest in welfare, and raise social awareness. For UPSC candidates, this subject represents governance issues in which progressive policies collide with recalcitrant ground realities. Transgender rights are not a charitable act, but rather a test of India’s constitutional morality and democratic maturity.

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About the Author: Jyoti Verma