Online locater to help zero in on queer-friendly services

The online locater (www.vartagensex.org/reachout.php) was developed by the Kolkata-based Varta Trust, Grindr for Equality (Los Angeles) and Saathii, a Chennai-based NGO. 

With the ongoing hearings in the Supreme Court of India to decriminalise homosexuality, there is a critical need to address the issues that queer people face with respect to their basic human rights such as access to health care and legal aid services, said Pawan Dhall, Founding Trustee of Varta Trust. 

“Through our webzine, we have been receiving queries across the country, since December 2013, when Section 377 criminalising homosexuality was upheld by the Supreme Court and the landmark judgment recognising the transgender community as the third gender. We felt the need for a national forum or an online locator for people, who can opt for healthcare and legal aid service providers, who will understand the community. We were clear that whenever the verdict comes, many people will require legal or healthcare services – which timed with the launch of this locater,” said Pawan. 

The service providers listed on the locator have been scrutinised for their attitude towards the community. 

“We prepared a list of service providers that we already knew through our own experience. Fortunately for the Indian queer movement, many linkages have been built over time and there are queer support groups. We found more service providers and each of them had to fill up a detailed questionnaire designed not only to check their services but also their level of information and attitude towards issues of the queer community. We leave out anything which is doubtful,” added Pawan, who has also roped in local-level queer support groups to add and scrutinise the list of service providers in each city. 

In Chennai, Orinam had worked towards enhancing the list of queer-friendly service providers. 

“We helped them with our crowd-sourced contact list of mental health professionals,” said Felix S, a member of Orinam, adding that there is a need for more queer-friendly services. 

“Though the level of awareness is not as good as we want, there is a steady improvement. Recently, the Indian Psychiatric Society stated that homosexuality is not an illness and supported decriminalisation. This will have an impact on the mental health service providers in that society. Though there is a steady increase, there is still a mismatch in supply and demand for queer-friendly service providers,” added Felix.