India's first trans pilot grounded and is now a delivery boy with Zomato. Why DGCA says Adam Harry can’t fly?

Adam Harry is a Zomato delivery boy. What’s the big deal, you may ask. Or even wonder who Adam Harry is and why his employment is in news. That’s because Adam Harry is India’s first trans trainee pilot. And he is held back from flying commercial planes because the Director General Civil Aviation (DGCA) denied him the license on the account of his gender – or more specifically, ‘gender dysphoria’

A lifetime of struggles

Adam Harry might have had a lot of questions while growing up about his gender, his identity and where he fits in the sexuality spectrum. You see, he was assigned female at birth but grew up identifying himself as a man. Even in today’s world, it is hard to be a transperson. The stigma is monumental and so is the discrimination even from one’s inner circle — family and friends, and of course society in general.

So had you met the young Adam Harry, and asked him what he would want to be when he grew up, you might have been expecting him to say that he wanted to be a man and identified as one. However, no matter what confusion he might have had vis-à-vis his gender, the one aspect he was very clear about was being a pilot. It started when his father bought him a fighter jet when Adam was a child.

And despite all odds — his parents beating him up to suppress his gender, bullied by teachers and peers, societal discrimination and rejection from various academies for commercial pilot training because of his gender, despite holding a private pilot licence from Skylark Aviation Academy in Johannesburg in 2017 — Harry managed to beat the odds. He joined the Rajiv Gandhi Academy for Aviation Technology for the three-year course and training to get a commercial pilot licence in 2019, under the Kerala Government’s welfare fund for transgender people. He shot to fame becoming the country's first transman trainee pilot.

Clipping the pilot’s wings

However, the transphobic world we live in continues to clip his wings and Adam Harry’s long list of trials in life barely seemed to end. The DGCA denied him a medical certificate declaring him “temporarily unfit” for flying as he was undergoing hormone therapy. The reason cited was ‘gender dysphoria'. As per UK’s National Health Service (NHS), “Gender dysphoria is a term that describes a sense of unease that a person may have because of a mismatch between their biological sex and their gender identity. This sense of unease or dissatisfaction may be so intense it can lead to depression and anxiety and have a harmful impact on daily life.” And it is this definition that DGCA chose to go by.

So as per the Civil Aviation body, Harry cannot be cleared to become a pilot till he is on hormone therapy. He was apparently told by the officials to first get his hormonal therapy completed and then apply again for the medical test. Why not wait, one may ask. Only because, for transpersons like Harry, hormonal therapy is lifelong.

Harry plans to file a writ petition in the High Court against DGCA for denying his medical certificate. Until then, he rides bikes delivering you food till he is able to fly planes and transport you from one city to another.