Guwahati, March 14: India’s first tea stall run by transgender people – “Trans Tea Stall” has been set up at Guwahati Railway Station in Assam and the inclusive initiative has impressed industrialist Anand Mahindra.
Calling the stall “significant and progressive”, Mahindra praised Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw for the initiative.
“This one small, initiative is, in my view, as significant & transformational as your many other progressive projects. Indian Railways carries over 8 billion people. And most important excludes no one. Bravo @AshwiniVaishnaw,” Anand Mahindra wrote tagging the minister’s original post where he shared photos of the stall.
👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽 This one small, initiative is, in my view, as significant & transformational as your many other progressive projects. Indian railways carries over 8 billion people. And most important, excludes no one. Bravo @AshwiniVaishnaw https://t.co/jraMFkwurA
— anand mahindra (@anandmahindra) March 14, 2023
The tea stall will be run entirely by transgender people and it’s the first of its kind in India.
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The stall was set up by the North East Frontier Railway (NEFR) in collaboration with the All Assam Transgender Association. The NEFR plans to open up more such stalls in a bid to empower transgender people and take more steps towards inclusivity.
The stall, pink in colour, is called “Trans Tea Stall” and the photographs showed two transgender people at the store. The stall sells cold beverages, juices, biscuits, and other snacks too, photos show.
While transgender rights have seen improvement in recent times in India, there are countless of them still begging on the streets to make a living with employment opportunities and educational progress still in nascent stages in most parts of the country.
