ON APRIL 15, TRANSGENDER PERSONS ACROSS THE COUNTRY observed the eleventh anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark judgement in National Legal Services Authority (NALSA) v. Union of India (2014), which paved the path to recognising the identity of transgender persons and upheld their fundamental rights. The rights envisioned have subsequently devolved into welfare schemes and approaches by various state governments, missing the larger spirit and mandate of the judgment.
I analyse the recently tabled Karnataka budget 2025-26, from the lens of social justice and equality, to assess its implications on the transgender community, whose plight remains overlooked.
Being a step ahead of the Union's Gender Budget Statement (‘GBS’), Karnataka’s 2025-26 GBS does include schemes for transgender welfare under its ambit. However, examining the 2025-26 Karnataka budget closely reveals that only Rs 5.54 crores of expenditure in schemes have been potentially geared towards transgender welfare, constituting a mere 0.005 percent of its GBS.
Allocations for schemes remain low, benefiting few
The majority of the expenditure geared towards transgender welfare appears to be driven by two prominent schemes: ‘Rehabilitation of Transgenders’ and ‘Mythri’. In addition to these schemes, the flagship ‘Shakti’ (free bus travel scheme) and ‘Gruha Lakshmi’ (monthly pension scheme) have also been extended towards transgender persons after sustained efforts by transgender community activists.
Under the ‘Rehabilitation of Transgenders Scheme’, the Karnataka State Women Development Corporation provides transgender persons with a onetime Direct Benefit Transfer (‘DBT’) subsidy amount of Rs 30,000 to complete Entrepreneurship Development Programme training (‘EDP’) to facilitate income-generating activities. The budgetary allocations for the scheme have remained stagnant at Rs 3 crore from 2020-21 to 2025-26. In 2023-24, according to publicly available data, only 1000 individuals received this amount under the scheme.
Similarly, Mythri is another scheme in Karnataka geared towards transgender populations, which provides a monthly pension of Rs 800 to transgender persons aged between 25 to 64. Budgetary allocations to the scheme have increased successively since 2021, from Rs 1.75 crore in 2021-22 to Rs 2.54 crore in 2025-26. However, in 2024-25, mid-year supplementary allocations pushed up the revised estimates to 2.63 crores. Even so, the government has allocated Rs 2.54 crores (3.4 percent lower than the previous year’s revised estimates) for the scheme in the budget 2025-26. According to budget data, in 2023-24, only 609 transgender persons were beneficiaries of the scheme.
In trying to establish the reasons why these schemes have been so heavily underutilised, we found out that the major challenge is the absence of reliable data on Karnataka's transgender population. As of March 2025, the data from the Election Commission indicates the presence of 42,756 transgender persons in Karnataka. However, leading community activists, such as Akkai Padmashali and Padma Shri B Manjamma Jogathi, assert that Karnataka's transgender population surpasses two lakh individuals. If official population figures from the Election Commission are to be considered, the Rehabilitation of Transgenders scheme covers 2.33 percent and Mythri scheme covers merely 1.42 percent of the state's transgender population. The severe undercounting of transgender persons and consequently, their invisibility, can potentially be one of the several reasons for both the stagnation and underutilisation of funds.
In the absence of comprehensive surveys and studies from states, researchers and activists are forced to rely on other sources of information. A study conducted by the Best Practices Foundation in 2022 on Livelihood Needs Assessment among Gender and Sexual Minorities (GSM), analysed the economic situation of 711 community members across seventeen districts in Karnataka, and found that 40 percent of the responders engaged in sex work to simply afford three meals in a day and 8 percent sought alms.
Well over half of the respondents said they needed gainful employment. Given this level of economic depravity prevalent within gender and sexual minorities, the current budget allocation is wholly inadequate.
Furthermore, many transgender persons have reported being unable to get the benefits of these schemes, including the Shakti and Gruha Lakshmi schemes, because of the unavailability of required documents. Unless there is significant movement to improve access to government-issued identification for the transgender communities, the schemes geared towards their welfare are likely to be underutilised. A double whammy.
Eligibility documents remain a hurdle to accessing schemes
A slew of identification documents, including an Aadhaar Card, Ration Card and Transgender Card, are required to be eligible for the schemes. Since many transgender persons leave their homes (of birth) due to social and parental exclusion without these identification documents, producing them becomes impossible for most. Besides this, many schemes are DBT-based and require the compulsory seeding of Aadhaar cards into bank accounts. Many transgender persons do not possess a bank account for the same reasons, creating a vicious cycle of exclusion.
It is also important to note that the vast majority of transgender persons also do not wish to disclose their identity publicly, fearing social discrimination. In fact, Karnataka is not a stranger to this; not long ago, the surveillance and the ease of harassment were built in Section 36A(c) of the Karnataka Police Act, 1963, which gave arbitrary powers to the police commissioner to prohibit, by any order, any eunuch from doing any activity. Transgender activists in Karnataka struggled for years to put an end to this, as this violated the constitutional right to equality and right to privacy granted to the third gender under the NALSA judgement.
A look at the Mazhavillu scheme in Kerala can further help us understand how precariously transgender identity is placed in society. In 2022, the Kerala state government decided to roll out a mobile app for the financial assistance scheme Mazhavillu. Since Transgender persons were required to reveal their identity for registration purposes, many chose not to opt for the scheme, fearing identity disclosure. This resulted in an extremely low number of three-hundred registrations until 2022, since the scheme's inception in 2018. The motive behind the app was to obviate the need for transgender people to visit government offices for registration; they could now use the app for registration without any apprehension. A similar approach in Karnataka, where trans persons are not required to reveal their gender identity publicly, can potentially expand the scope of beneficiaries. This will allow the government to allocate public resources in a way that also promotes the dignity of transgender persons.
Social justice for all - Nudidante Nade
The GBS allows for a focused estimation of the extent to which the government is spending on issues that address gendered inequities in our society. To that end, it is imperative that the GBS also includes a Transgender Budget Statement which can:
(1) help monitor expenditures and public service delivery of various ministries and departments, and
(2) allocate the quantum of resources that can address the needs of transgender persons.
The only state to ensure that there is a separate Transgender Budget Statement included within GBS is Kerala. A similar approach to having a Transgender Budget Statement at the Karnataka State level can be a powerful mechanism for identifying and allocating financial resources across government departments and ministries geared towards transgender welfare. Further, this statement should also serve the purpose of public accountability and must not remain as a fact sheet for enumerating scheme implementation. Given that Karnataka is yet to have a transgender person as a Member of Legislative Assembly or Parliament, it is imperative that these rights of transgender persons are protected and prioritised through an institutional process, which can adequately highlight the interests of this very diverse community.
Karnataka Chief Minster Siddaramaiah stated in his budget speech, “Social Justice is not just our belief, but a broader perspective towards life. The Kayaka and Dasoha principles of Basavadi Sharanas inspire us towards building an equal society.”
Given that the principles of Basavadi are invoked, it is also incumbent that building an equal society must include the transgender community as well. Basvanna’s shibboleth - Nudidante Nade (practice as you preach) serves as a reminder to all of us to ensure that, without justice for everyone, there is justice for no-one.