I found these articles helpful:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scheduled_castehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reservation_in_IndiaThe following is my almost certainly flawed understanding from reading the above articles, and then going back to re-read the news story:
The bottom line is that the Indian legal system now recognizes transgender people as a disadvantaged minority, and is taking steps to shelter them from discrimination, provide them financial assistance, and ease their access to government services. In many regards, this doesn't translate to the american system at all, but bears similarity to affirmative action, medicaid, social security, and more.
The really cool thing about this is that the system of benefits is fairly mature, and the draft (keep in mind, not passed) legislation simply adds transgender people as a protected class -- it doesn't seem to require a huge amount of work on anybody's part. I can't say whether or not the system works, but at least this won't be voted down because it's "too hard to implement" or something.
