From sniggers to abuse: ‘visibly different’ LGBT Indians struggle for jobs

• Sarwar Alam
• 30 August, 2018

By: Sarwar Alam

At a busy New Delhi intersection, Kummi knocks on car windows and begs for money – the only job she says she is qualified for in India, where stigma denies transgender women like her education or employment. Male-to-female transgender people, also known as hijras, often beg, sell their bodies for sex or extract money from families celebrating the birth of a child or a marriage by threatening to curse them with infertility or bad luck. “I never went to school or college. I have no skills to do much else … this job gets me by,” said Kummi, who goes by…

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