As we step into the Pride Month, it is encouraging to see how far the LGBTQIA+ movement has come. The election season in India served up many new reasons to hope for a fairer, more inclusive future for the LGBTQIA+ community, with political parties promising steps to recognise and safeguard its rights and interests in their manifestos.
BJP’s Sankalp Patra, for example, promised to extend the Ayushman Bharat medical insurance scheme to transgenders and expand the network of Garima Grahas to cater to their needs. Similarly, the Indian National Congress party’s Nyaya Patra spoke of recognising civil unions of the LGBTQIA+ communities and the CPI (M) pledged laws to recognise and protect same-sex marriages.
The very presence of LGBTQIA+ issues on election manifestos represented a shift in the tectonics of India’s political discourse. Sure, no one expected these issues to set off electoral landslides, not yet any way. But their very appearance is perhaps a sign of a society stirring out of denial and beginning to recognise the LGBTQIA+ communities, and the fact that their issues aren’t embarrassing realities to be swept under the carpet.
The need to ensure legislative representation of the community stands accentuated particularly in the light of the recent Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriages, which upholds the primacy of Parliament, for enacting and amending laws. Clearly, affirmative steps are an imperative to secure legislative presence for the community because, given its dispersed geographical presence, the community may never be able to mark much presence in Parliament. In fact, an online petition by Telangana Chief Minister Revanth Reddy in his earlier avatar as an MP, making a plea to the government to give transgenders reservation in Parliament deserves serious attention.
Hopefully, moving forward the favourable winds for this large but socially scorned community will only pick up, stirred if not by conscience, then by economic self-interest. The estimated purchasing power of the pink or the rainbow economy is an estimated at $168 billion in India (in nominal GDP terms). However, the stigma and discrimination hounding the community hinders its entry into the labour force, which in turn, diminishes productivity and extracts an economic cost estimated to be in the region of 0.1 per cent to 1.7 per cent of the nation’s GDP. Also, it affects the socio-economic conditions of this community, which is estimated at 10% of India’s 1.4 billion population, thereby impeding inclusive development.
For change to be meaningful, reforms need to be inclusive and pervasive, top down and bottom up, born of widespread social realisation and acceptance that our world is made up of genders of varied hues and all of them have equal rights and entitlements.
The need of the hour, therefore, is a holistic strategy anchored in basics like ensuring comprehensive sex education in schools and enacting and enabling policies and laws that safeguard the reproductive rights and quality healthcare for all. A combination of education, cultural reforms and supportive policies can help India foster a healthy society, which celebrates diversity and liberates individuals to achieve their dreams regardless of their sexual moorings.
Rajiv Tikoo is Consulting Editor, Sustainability, Outlook Group