Fifty-three-year-old M. Radha, a transwoman contesting in the Assembly election from Mylapore constituency as an independent, has no delusions about securing a huge share of votes, let alone winning.
Her modest expectation is to surpass the number of votes she got in the Parliamentary election in 2019, the first time she contested an election. As a candidate from the Chennai South constituency, under which Mylapore Assembly segment falls, she secured 1,042 votes and stood 14th among the 40 contestants.
“I am very hopeful of getting considerably more votes this time,” Ms. Radha who is contesting on the “telephone” symbol, says.
She is, however, clear about her objective for entering the fray. “I want to change the stigmatised perception people have about transgenders and highlight our issues by using election as an opportunity to get people’s attention,” she says.
She is one of the only two transgender candidates among the 3,998 people contesting in this election across Tamil Nadu. The only other such candidate is Bharathi Kannamma, contesting from Madurai South constituency.
Ms. Radha says that though members of the transgender community were finding more acceptance and were gradually entering many professions, there was still a long way to go for the society to change its negative perceptions about them.
“Many still want to think of us as those who either beg or involve in sex work for livelihood. I want to show that we are dignified people who are struggling in life due to discrimination, lack of opportunities and support,” she says.
“Hence, I am contesting the election although I have no money for the campaign,” she adds. She says that even the deposit money for contesting and the money for printing pamphlets, her only mode of campaigning, were raised through crowdfunding with the support of the community and some shopkeepers in her locality.
Highlighting how numbers mattered in electoral politics, she complains that since transgenders were numerically small, none of the major political parties have prominently highlighted any welfare measures for them in their manifestos.
“The Transgender Welfare Board, started during the previous DMK government, has largely remained non-functional since 2015,” she says. She adds that she is paid an abysmally low salary of Rs. 500 per month for working as a peer educator for a government programme through a non-governmental organisation to create awareness among the transgender community.
“In contrast, a group of us recently visited Kerala and we were impressed by the schemes implemented there for transgenders. There is free housing, government employment and government-run shelters,” she says.
On whether she intended to join any political party, she quips that parties called them only during times of elections to attend meetings or campaigns in return for money, but did not want to give them opportunity to enter electoral politics.
Though her victory is a long shot, Ms. Radha, however, says she dreams of a day when the voice of a transgender person will reverberate in the legislature, demanding their rights.
