Metropolitan cities in India have become a site of queer activism and queer visibility after the Delhi High Court decriminalized homosexuality in 2009. The Supreme Court through its 2013 verdict overruled the 2009 Delhi High Court judgement thereby recriminalising homosexuality. However, this conservative stance of the Supreme Court could not diminish the spirit of visibility and mobilizational politics. Queer aspirations seem to have intensified and multiplied in the age of social media. Hyderabad as one of the corporatized cities of India has experienced heightening of queer politics in recent years. The article delineates the growing radicalization of the queer movement in the city of Hyderabad since 2014/2015 due to the entry of a vocal and enlightened transleadership. The latter has attempted to remap and rescript Hyderabad's queer movement through decorporatization and greater inclusion of grass root issues in in its political mobilizations. Through its tactics and organizational approaches, it has also challenged the hegemonic constructions of queer politics as articulated by Non Governmental Organizations and elites within the gay community.

Transgender women (TGW) in India, especially those who engage in sex work, are at high risk for HIV. Guided by the information-motivation-behavioral skills model and qualitative formative research findings, Sakhi (girlfriend), a 3-week smartphone-based pilot intervention consisting of short videos (one/week) and text messages (two/week), was implemented using a one-group pre- and post-test design to test its efficacy in promoting condom use and HIV testing among TGW (n = 50) who engage in sex work in Chennai. Changes in outcomes were assessed by conducting multivariable analyses using generalized estimating equations. Participants’ mean age was 26 years, and the mean monthly income was INR 21700 (USD 292). About one-third completed college, and 96% were HIV-negative. Significant changes in the desired direction were observed in the primary outcomes: condom use – decrease in the engagement of condomless anal sex with male partners (12% to 2%, p < 0.05) and HIV testing – increase in intentions to undergo HIV testing every 6 months (34% to 86%, p < 0.001); and in some of the secondary outcomes: decrease in alcohol use before sex, increase in intentions to use condoms consistently and increase in the well-being score. This study demonstrated the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary efficacy of the Sakhi intervention and warrants a larger randomized trial among diverse subgroups in diverse settings.

Procreative ideologies, alternatively called conception beliefs, are ideas concerning the male and female contributions to biological reproduction. Expressed through the metaphor of ‘seed’ and ‘earth’ in many South Asian cultures, these ideologies have been found to be demonstrably gendered, acting sometimes as a central variable in mediating men's and women's access to material and symbolic resources. Many gender-sensitive ethnographies have demonstrated the power of this metaphorical understanding in regulating and controlling the body and sexuality of women, and affecting the everyday lives of men and women as gendered subjects. The present article examines and evaluates the operation of procreative ideology in the case of the Kolams, a ‘primitive’ tribal community in south-eastern Maharashtra.

This paper attempts to understand and narrate the experiences of Shivashaktis, a gender transgressive community from Southern India, during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Shivashaktis’ gender transgressions and embodied ritual power allow them to intercede between the human and the divine. This secures them religious sanction and legitimacy and offers a source of income for them. They are engaged in several livelihood practices that are associated with ritual practices such as performing oracles, laggams (deity marriages), joggu, etc. Their embeddedness in heterosexual family structures, however, hinder their access to benefits that are allocated for the transgender community through the state and non-state policy programmes. During the pandemic, with the state-announced lockdown across the nation, and particularly in Telangana, Shivashaktis were pushed further into precarity, burdened by economic, psychological and community disruptions. Within this context, the paper critically engages with the impact of COVID-19 that brought the entire relational world of the gender transgressive Shivashaktis to collapse rigorously, affecting their livelihood and sense of being and belonging in the world.