Nestled inside Omble garden at Aarey in Goregaon is the city’s first toilet exclusively for use by transgender people, set up by Saarthi Foundation, an NGO uplifting  underprivileged people in health and education sector. The project was supported by Shiv Sena’s Jogeshwari East MLA Ravindra Waikar, Pawan Yadav, who is President of Saarthi Foundation and the first transgender advocate to practice in Maharashtra, Subhana Shaikh, Joint Secretary of Saarthi Foundation, advocates  Dwivendra Dubey and Ravi Yadav. The only thing different in this Indian-style washroom is that it is exclusively for transgender people.

While this could be seen as a good step for the trans community, members believe that this might not be a very inclusive one. “I see this as positive, but I also see this in a different light. We [The Humsafar Trust] talk about inclusion, but if we have a separate transgender toilet that stands apart from those that offer mainstream access, then it becomes difficult for us to talk about inclusion, because it defeats the purpose,” says Tinesh Chopade, advocacy manager at The Humsafar Trust, an organisation that works with LGBTQ communities in Mumbai and surrounding areas. Anjali Siroya, a trans woman and recruitment coordinator at The Humsafar Trust, says, “Having an exclusive transgender public toilet can be a problem because it [transgender] is an umbrella term that includes persons of various identities including trans men, women, non-binary among others. It’s too small an effort.”