‘Transgenders need facilities for an inclusive life’

HISAR: R Anushri, lead organiser of Trans Rights Now Collective (TRNC) from Tamil Nadu, said while the government has launched many welfare schemes and reservation for neglected women, Dalits and backward castes, about five lakh transgenders remain neglected.
“Despite being the topper in the cut-off list, I was not given a job because I am a transgender (transform). However, a petition has been filed in the Madras High Court,” she alleged, speaking on the sidelines of a programme, ‘Baaten Aman Ki’, organized by a senior secondary school in Hisar.
In 2016, she said, cut-off in the Tamil Nadu Public Service Commission’s recruitment test was 90 points and she got 121 points, but did not get the job.In 2014, the Supreme Court accorded constitutional recognition to the third gender in its Nalsa judgment and ordered reservation for them in educational institutions and government jobs. But this has not been implemented till date, she said. However, this arrangement was made in Pakistan in 2015.
On social discrimination, she said when they go to women’s washrooms, women feel offended and when they go to the men's toilet they stand the risk of sexual harassment. Therefore, she said, transgenders need a separate toilet.
Anushri said that when she was seven years old, she started developing feelings of a woman. She would wear girls’ clothes and her parents respected her feelings. But they died when she was 14 . An elder brother, a sister and two younger sisters despised her after their marriage. She become a software engineer and worked as an HR professional by concealing her identity and collecting money for surgeries in 2012.
Box: Key demands of transgenders
— Accommodation, pension and medical arrangements in the city for uneducated and ageing transgenders
— Separate arrangements for transgenders in public toilets
— Commission to resolve problems of transenders
— Reservation in government jobs and educational institutions as per SC order