Entrepreneurship-based Livelihood Strategies for the Transgender Community: Evidence from India’s Action Lab Project

Human resource development is central to national progress, yet transgender and gender-variant persons remain among the most marginalised groups, facing systemic barriers to education, employment and social inclusion. Conventional livelihood programmes, which assume short-term skill training alone can generate sustainable employment, fail to address the multidimensional nature of exclusion. Challenges such as disrupted education, irregular income, family rejection, unstable housing, health vulnerabilities, unsafe mobility, documentation gaps, financial exclusion and limited market access collectively constrain economic participation. To respond to these complexities, the Centre on Integrated Rural Development for Asia and the Pacific (CIRDAP), Dhaka, Bangladesh and the National Institute of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj (NIRDPR), Hyderabad, India, developed the Action Lab for the Inclusion of Transgender and Gender-Variant Youth in Mainstream Livelihoods. The initiative combined community-led demographic mapping with qualitative interviews to align livelihood models with lived realities. Mushroom cultivation, spice processing, textile manufacturing, poultry and coco-shell crafts were selected for their accessibility, local relevance and collective-enterprise potential. Implementation emphasised practical, affirming and community-controlled environments, enabling participants to acquire skills, engage in production cycles and interact with markets. Early outcomes demonstrated skill confidence, production readiness and initial customer engagement, though market creation, financial access and enterprise management remain challenges. The Action Lab’s contribution lies in its iterative method—community-led diagnosis, practical experimentation, adaptive refinement, collective organisation and enterprise incubation—providing a foundation for community-owned entrepreneurship and inclusive wage-employment pathways.