Baneful life of transgender: A case studies of Odisha

The Male to Female (MTF) Transgenders in India commonly known as the Hijras are one of the hardly researched, abused, scorned, and callously neglected groups in Indian Society. This paper is part of the doctoral research submitted to the University of Mumbai entitled ‘The Status of Hijras in Civil Society: A Study of Hijras in Greater Mumbai.’ The objectives of this paper are to showcase briefly the socio economic status of hijras and to understand the problems faced by them with specific reference to their health and the harassment hijras face due to the Police. An exploratory cum descriptive research design with a non-random purposive sampling including the snowball technique was adopted, to collect data from sixty-three hijras cross the districts of Mumbai and Thane from the state of Maharashtra, India. The socio economic status was measured using the Kuppuswamy Scale (2005). Among the hijras, more than half of them belonged to the middle class and about forty percent belonged to the upper-lower class. Majority of hijras stated that they faced several health problems and also problems related to harassment, unlawful penalties, sexual abuse, violence and deprivation of human rights. They chiefly named the police including the traffic and railway police, as perpetrators of violence and abuse.