Review of (revisiting) the transgender education in India: An analysis of the National Educational Policy 2020

Abstract

The transgender community/communities (Henceforth, referred to as TGC) has been facing numerous hardships and challenges, which subsequently acts as a deterrent in their social, cultural and economic development. Education, which acts as an emancipation for all social evils is also quite very low for these communities. In this context, the paper seeks to understand the educational rights for the TGC in India. | INTRODUCTIONThe transgender community (henceforth, referred to as TGC) are individuals born with male or female anatomies but they feel radically different from their bodily structure Rafeek, 2015). As per census 2011, there are around 4.9-lakh third gender in the country who faces social discrimination and harassment (Rajkumar, 2016). Mostly abandoned by family they become subjects of humiliation. TGC have suffered great injustices in the previous three centuries. They have been marginalised, socially, economically and educationally (Chandra, 2017).Census data also reveals that 46% of the TGC have some level of education (Chandra, 2017). Rafeek (2015) has also highlighted that TGC are deprived of their basic human rights.International Covenant of Social, Cultural and Educational Rights adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1966 clearly expresses that rights should be progressively realised, without any discrimination on the basis of sex, race, caste, colour and so forth. It recognises the rights of the individual to have adequate living conditions, with social security, family life, employment opportunities, and health access. All these rights can be realised by realising another right mentioned in the covenant, that is, the Right to Education. Therefore, the realisation of the Right to Education can be put first in the order of priority among these rights as it enables the development of human potential to its fullest and awards a sense of dignity. In this paper, the authors have tried to understand the right to education from the perspective of TGC and how far the policy has been successful in addressing their issues and concerns.

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