Four years ago Nikita Mukhydal, 35, was an entrepreneur, running a beauty parlour and an eatery in Pune. In her downtime, she pursued her passion for dance, dabbling in Lavani, Bollywood item songs and Marathi folk dance for one-off shows. The earnings were good, by her own admission. And yet, when the opportunity arrived to switch to being a salaried professional, she didn’t waste a minute. Since eight months, Mukhydal has been manning the Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation office as security personnel. She shuttles between the main gate, corporator’s office and scanner machine, in an eight-hour shift that lasts from 10 am to 6 pm. What some would consider a brain dead job is one she excitedly embraced, because it brought her closer to a dream. “Har kisi ko vardi ka craze hai,” she tells us over a phone call from her residence. And the uniform, she knew, would bring her the respect that had eluded her. Mukhydal, a trans woman, saved up funds from her dancing assignments to foot the bill for a sex change surgery she underwent between 2017 and 2018.   

When she heard that recruitment to the state police force were going to be underway, she thought transgender persons like herself stood a chance. “The recruitment of 27 transgender people as private security guards at the municipal corporation office had become big news. We had met politicians too. I was hopeful that the police recruitment would offer us openings. But when I accessed the online application form last November, I realised that the third gender option was missing,” she says. When she called the helpline of the Director General of Police, she was told she couldn’t apply for the position of female constable.