-The Indian Express Transgender Persons Bill has let down the community’s long struggle for self respect. The passage of the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill, 2019, has caused great disapointment to the transgender community in India that had urged the Rajya Sabha to refer the Bill to a select committee. The Bill failed to incorporate crucial recommendations of the Parliament Standing Committee and several depositions by the transgender and intersex community....

-The Indian Express Bill to promote altruistic surrogacy gives short shrift to women’s agency. The Lok Sabha passed the Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill 2019 on Tuesday. The Billl aims to regulate the practice of surrogacy in India and allow only “ethical altruistic surrogacy”. The Bill was first introduced in the lower house in November 2016, then referred to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Health and Family Welfare. It was introduced and passed...

-The Hindu The national bar against hate crime has been lowered, but resolute corrective action is possible Once again, the first weeks of the Narendra Modi administration have been marked by hate crimes — two Muslim men beaten by mobs in Jharkhand and Mumbai, demanding they shout ‘Jai Shri Ram’, one so mercilessly that he died. Another man, a tribal, lynched in Tripura on suspicion of being a cattle thief. Most recently,...

-The Telegraph The harassment at workplace act needs an upgrade to include men and Transgenders in the MeToo conversation I have been sexually harassed and bullied by my boss. I was threatened I would lose my job if I didn’t comply — sounds like an excerpt from one of the hundreds of accounts of women that have been doing the rounds on social media? Well, it is a story of sexual harassment...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Union cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday approved guidelines for granting special remission to certain categories of prisoners, including women, Transgenders and the differently abled, as part of commemorating the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. According to the decision, women and transgender convicts who are at least 55 years old and have completed half their sentences will be granted the remission and set...