JOIN USSome food for thought
The second wave of Covid-19 has been devastating for India with needless deaths due to lack of oxygen and lack of timely and adequate access to hospital services. Even as the headlines are rightly dominated by the emergency situation, there is another emergency that is lurking just a little out of sight. What we learnt through the first lockdown is the utter precarity of the lives of the poor in India who literally live from day to day. If you do not work for a day you do not eat, it is that simple.
The lockdown destroyed many livelihoods and some of the worst affected communities have been the transgender communities. This is because transgender communities have been dependent for their livelihood on sex work and begging and both became impossible during the lockdown. In capitalist countries like the UK, US and Canada the government makes sure that people do not go hungry by putting money in their bank accounts. In India that is a distant dream with the government, when nudged by the courts at best, provides ration kits to the needy.
Trans communities survived the first lockdown mainly due to strong community initiatives which supplied ration kits to those in need as well as some measure of state support. It’s amazing to note that difficult times often bring out the best in people, so it was with the trans community. Activists Rumi Harish and Sunil Mohan have documented how the trans community mobilised to not only take care of their own but also distributed relief kits to others in need be it slum dwellers or the urban poor. Similarly, another initiative called ‘Trans Community Kitchen’ in Chennai during the last lockdown distributed what they called, ‘food cooked with love’ to those who were going hungry. The lockdown this time around is more challenging as any community effort to help the needy carries a greater measure of risk due to the wide spread of Covid-19. The way forward this time around has to be a direct transfer of money to the accounts of those at the margins of society to ensure that they don’t starve. The transgender community must not be left out of this form of relief.
(The author is a lawyer & writer based in Bengaluru. He is the co-editor of Law like love: Queer perspectives on law.)