In September, Karnataka made history by conducting India’s first state-wide baseline survey of gender minorities. The Department of Women and Child Development, in collaboration with the Karnataka State Women’s Development Corporation, launched what was heralded as a landmark initiative to document the lives of transgender persons across 31 districts.

By January, the results were in: 10,365 transgender individuals had been identified in a state with a population of approximately 6.87 crore.

The survey’s stated objective – to rehabilitate gender minorities and ensure their access to governmental welfare benefits – was admirable. Yet beneath this progressive veneer lies a troubling reality: the survey has grossly undercounted Karnataka’s trans population, turning a potentially transformative exercise in data collection into a missed opportunity for advancing gender justice.

The survey’s published figures reveal an unsettling statistical anomaly. According to official data from the 2011 Census of India, Karnataka recorded 20,266 transgender persons – nearly double the 2025 survey’s count.

This raises an immediate question: how has a state’s transgender population apparently halved over 14 years, during a period when social acceptance has grown, legal protections have expanded following the landmark 2014 National Legal Services Authority judgement that legally recognized transgender people as a third gender and global transgender visibility has increased?

The answer lies not in demographic reality but in the survey’s fundamentally flawed methodology.

The 2017 Karnataka State Policy for Transgenders emerged against a backdrop of systemic exclusion. Transgender persons in Karnataka – like their counterparts across India – face discrimination at every turn: family rejection, educational barriers, employment discrimination, and violence. Studies have consistently documented that many transgender individuals are forced to leave their homes, with only 2% living with their families. The suicide attempt rate among this population is approximately 50% before age 20.

These grim statistics underscored the urgent need for accurate demographic data to inform evidence-based policy interventions.

The 2025 survey’s methodology, however, fundamentally undermined its objectives. Conducted over 45 days from mid-September 2025, the enumeration required transgender persons to report to designated locations – primarily district hospitals and taluk government hospitals – for registration.

This hospital-based approach created several barriers to participation. Transgender persons who live in rural areas, lack transportation, fear institutional settings due to prior discrimination or simply were unaware of the survey would have been systematically excluded.

For a community that experiences profound stigma within healthcare settings, mandating hospital visits was almost certain to suppress participation.

The numerical case for undercounting is overwhelming. Using the 2011 Census figure (itself likely an undercount given the stigma surrounding census self-identification), the 2025 survey captured only 51% of the transgender persons documented 14 years earlier.

The survey’s geographic distribution further exposes its inadequacy. Vijayapura district recorded the highest count with 1,428 transgender persons, followed by Chikkaballapur with 1,252, and Bengaluru Urban with 757. That Bengaluru – Karnataka’s cosmopolitan capital with a population exceeding 1.2 crore – recorded fewer transgender persons than Vijayapura (population approximately 25 lakh) defies demographic logic.

This pattern suggests that the survey’s reach and effectiveness varied dramatically across districts, likely reflecting differences in local implementation, awareness campaigns, and community engagement rather than actual population distributions.

The transgender community’s response to the survey results was swift and unequivocal. In October, even before the final results were published, the Karnataka Transgender Task Force publicly flagged the survey’s design flaws. The Task Force’s primary criticism centred on the mandatory requirement for transgender persons to report to assigned places for registration.

Activists demanded a door-to-door enumeration approach, arguing that only such an approach could capture the true scope of the transgender population, particularly those who are most marginalised and least likely to voluntarily visit government hospitals.

Broad implications

The broader implications of this undercounting extend far beyond statistical accuracy. The survey was explicitly designed to inform policy interventions: the final report recommends priority hostel admissions, scholarships, competitive exam coaching, healthcare access, employment and skill development training, housing, infrastructure development, and the establishment of a Gender Minority Welfare Development Board.

Each of these policy recommendations depends on accurate population data for resource allocation, programme design, and impact assessment. An undercount of this magnitude means that budgets will be inadequate, services will be undersupplied, and the very communities the survey aimed to help will remain underserved. Moreover, the official figure of 10,365 will likely be cited in future policy discussions, perpetuating the invisibility of the majority of Karnataka’s transgender population.

The survey’s failure represents a broader pattern in how marginalised communities are often counted. The 2011 Census recorded 4.88 lakh transgender persons across India – a figure widely acknowledged as a significant undercount, as many transgender persons chose to identify as male or female due to stigma or because there was no explicit question on gender identity, only on sex.

Despite these profound shortcomings, the survey was not without merit. The very fact that Karnataka undertook this enumeration demonstrated political will and recognised the necessity of evidence-based policymaking. The survey collected valuable data on educational attainment, employment status, caste composition and religious demographics among those who were counted.

The recommendations emerging from the survey – particularly the proposal for a Gender Minority Welfare Development Board and one percent reservation in private sector employment – represent progressive policy thinking. The fundamental problem was not the intent but the implementation.

The lessons for other states are clear. Any enumeration of transgender populations must adopt a door-to-door approach, ideally integrated with regular census operations to reduce stigma and maximise participation.

Extensive community engagement is essential: transgender-led organisations must be meaningfully involved in survey design, implementation, and verification.

Enumerators require comprehensive training in transgender-sensitive approaches, including understanding diverse gender identities and creating safe spaces for disclosure. Multiple registration channels – including online portals, community centres, and mobile units – should be available to accommodate diverse needs and circumstances.

Finally, the enumeration period must be sufficiently long, with extensive awareness campaigns in several languages and formats to reach isolated and marginalised community members.

Gender justice demands not merely the gesture of counting, but the commitment to count properly – to ensure that every transgender person is seen, acknowledged and included in the data that will shape their futures. Only then can surveys like this fulfil their transformative potential rather than becoming, as Karnataka’s has, a well-intentioned failure that perpetuates the very invisibility it sought to remedy.

Vishal R Choradiya is an assistant professor with the Department of Professional Studies, Christ University, Bengaluru