The Centre has moved a Cabinet note to include transgender persons in the central list of Other Backward Classes or OBCs. This is so that trans people can access the 27% reservation for OBCs in educational institutions and government jobs. 

But trans people have been protesting this move and demanding horizontal reservation, across different caste categories. On this episode of Pride and Prejudice, host Suryatapa Mukherjee speaks with Dalit transgender activist Grace Banu to understand what horizontal reservation is and how it would benefit transgender people. Grace Banu is the founder of Trans Rights Now Collective and India’s first openly transgender engineer. 

For the full picture of our reservation policy, please listen to The Suno India Show episodes, OBC Bill: A history of reservation and how we got here and Caste Census: Why it stopped and why it must start again.

Additional reading:

Grace Banu Ganesan v. State of Tamil Nadu 
Global Freedom of Expression | NALSA Judgment: Critique of the Indian Perspective Beyond the Adams-And-Eves Worldview
Grace Banu on Discrimination in Workplaces & Universities | India Culture Lab
Transgender population 2011 census
THE TRANSGENDER PERSONS (PROTECTION OF RIGHTS) ACT, 2019 

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