JOIN USTransgenders' rights must be protected: UGC to varsities
Days after notifying transgenders as the third gender to allow them to pursue higher education, the UGC has asked all varsities to ensure that rights of the community are protected.
Writing to university vice-chancellors , the UGC has asked them to fast-track the mainstreaming of transgenders and create friendly infrastructure like restrooms in their campuses.
“Understandably, this will go a long way in acclimatising transgender students without facing any fear stigma or shame,” UGC secretary Jaspal S Sandhu noted.
Faculties should be encouraged to take up ethnographic studies on the life and culture of transgender community for better understanding and dispelling myths about them in “popular discourse”, the UGC said, adding that a new scheme for awarding projects has been formulated for this purpose. “The Commission is not offering any fixed number of major research projects as of now,” sources said. “It would depend on funds available and the number of proposals received.”
The intent behind the new scheme for research projects is also to help transgenders get out of their stigma and social discrimination through policy intervention.
“The transgender is a distinct cultural identity and a unique presence on the socio-cultural map of the country. It is to be admitted that much remains to be done in order to ameliorate the discrimination and deprivation suffered by transgender community in Indian society,” Sandhu said.
In July last year, the UGC notified transgender as third gender, allowing them to avail scholarship and fellowship programmes offered to students of higher educational institutions.
The UGC notification, which followed a landmark Supreme Court judgement, also asked universities and colleges to treat the community members as third gender for admission purposes.
Giving third gender status to transgenders in April last year, the apex court had directing the Centre to treat the community members as socially and economically backward. The apex court said members of the third gender should be considered Other Backward Classes and the government should extend them educational and job reservation available under that category.