No.1 Transgender Job Agency

The Kochi Metro adds to the high spirits at this LGBT Pride Month by employing 23 transgender persons. A heartening example and one of a small clutch of initiatives to welcome the marginalised transgender community into the formal jobs sector

- Moeena Halim

Vyjayanti Vasanta Mogli’s resume is im­pressive. With 14 years of experience as a corporate trainer—with awards won, too—there seems no reason she should find it difficult to get a job. The problem, however, lies in what the addendum to her name on her resume reveals: Mogli was born Vijay Jagdish Mogli, a male.

In April 2014, when the Supreme Court recognised the funda­ mental and civil rights of transpersons via the National Legal Services Authority vs Union of India (NALSA) judgment, Mogli, then employed at a multinational IT firm, decided to come out of the closet. However, like many others from the transgender com­munity, she found that the court’s judgment carried little weight in the everyday world. As Vijay, Mogli was awarded for “outstanding contributions to enhancing training effectiveness”. As Vyjayanti, she found herself being retrenched, and two years on, struggling to receive responses to her job applications. “I’m not alone in my predicament. Unemployment is rampant across the transgender community,” says Mogli, who has been an activist for transper­ sons since 2013 and is a founding member of the Telangana Hijra Intersex Transgender Samiti (THITS).

That said, there are folks from the mainstream who are trying to make a difference. Chennai­based Neelam Jain wants to cre­ate a more level playing field, and is doing so through her startup, PeriFerry—a job consultancy exclusively catering to the transgender community.