{"id":30004,"date":"2018-10-26T13:24:13","date_gmt":"2018-10-26T07:54:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=30004"},"modified":"2018-10-26T13:24:13","modified_gmt":"2018-10-26T07:54:13","slug":"a-promise-falls-short","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/a-promise-falls-short\/","title":{"rendered":"A promise falls short"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/todays-paper\/tp-opinion\/a-promise-falls-short\/article23507241.ece\">A promise falls short<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Context<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Four years after a landmark verdict, it is time to push for reforms to give transgender persons their rights<\/p>\n<p><strong>A landmark judgement towards gender equality: <\/strong><strong>National Legal Services Authority v. Union of India (2014<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>National Legal Services Authority v. Union of India\u00a0is a landmark decision by the\u00a0Supreme Court of India, which declared\u00a0transgender\u00a0people to be a &#8216;third gender&#8217;, affirmed that the\u00a0fundamental rights\u00a0granted under the\u00a0Constitution of India\u00a0will be equally applicable to transgender people, and gave them the right to self-identification of their gender as male, female or third-gender<\/p>\n<p><strong>Questions raised by the author<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>With the fourth anniversary of NALSA coming up, it is time we ask whether its promises are being fulfilled? Are there positive changes on the ground?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Problematic Transgender Persons Bill<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The proposed Transgender Persons Bill, 2016 was extremely problematic as it failed to even define transgender persons adequately and was rejected by the trans community.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Changing legal identity an uphill task<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Getting their changed names and gender markers in their birth certificates, educational certificates, PAN cards, passports and identity documents is an uphill battle with no norms or guidelines laid down for such change of legal identity.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>No change allowed without medical certificates<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>While\u00a0NALSA\u00a0mandates the right to identify one\u2019s gender even without medical intervention, government authorities do not allow change of name and gender identity unless medical certificates show that the person has undergone sex reassignment surgery, thus completely nullifying what the Supreme Court aimed to protect<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>No reservation in education or employment<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>There are no schemes for reservation of transgender\/intersex persons in educational institutions and public employment<\/li>\n<li>They are not included in any of the reserved categories, making education and public employment out of bounds for them due to their transgender and gender non-conforming status<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>No gender neutral public utilities<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Even within schools, universities and public institutions there are no gender neutral public toilets.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What needs to be done?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>We need a Gender Identity Law, which would provide for a person to change name and gender, and take inspiration from Argentina, which introduced a law based on self-determination and provides full recognition of a person\u2019s self-defined gender identity<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The list of legal reforms that are needed to truly capture the letter and spirit of NALSA\u00a0is long. The Supreme Court has been constantly reiterating its stand on transgender rights, and it is time that governments work towards the realisation of these rights<strong>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A promise falls short Context Four years after a landmark verdict, it is time to push for reforms to give transgender persons their rights A landmark judgement towards gender equality: National Legal Services Authority v. Union of India (2014 National Legal Services Authority v. Union of India\u00a0is a landmark decision by the\u00a0Supreme Court of India,&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/a-promise-falls-short\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">A promise falls short<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-test-1","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1704785320},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30004\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}