Transvestites can now claim a place of their own in Government of India’s fiscal statistics. The Union Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation will include transvestites as a distinct gender for the sixth economic census to be held shortly.
“For the first time, transvestite has been included as a gender option other than male and female,” Sunil Jain deputy director at the Central Ministry told a news conference organised in the State on Tuesday.
“Earlier, we had only two genders. Now when we will list the third gender, transvestites, under the header of proprietary ownership,” Jain added.
Jain was in Goa to attend a workshop for census officials at the Goa International Centre, in Dona Paula, on the outskirts of the capital.
The Economic Census is carried out in order to collect economic data and to tabulate a complete count of business establishment and units in the organised and the unorganised sectors in order to better idea for government development programmes. A census to be held this year will be the sixth such pan-India exercise conducted - the first was carried out in 1977.
Besides the gender of the proprietor, the Ministry has also decided to list the religion. “We will also list the proprietors religion. Religion is a demographic feature and collecting religion wise information is one of the directives of the Sarkaria commission,” Jain said.
The Economic Census operation in Goa would begin from August and nearly 1000 government employees would be involved in gathering data from all over the state.