India’s LGBT community deserves better apps. After drinks on a Saturday night, Akash* opens the gay meet-up app Grindr to continue an earlier conversation. They’ve agreed to meet at the large ICICI Bank at the corner. After waiting a few nervous minutes, he recognizes a face coming up the street. Their walk home carefully avoids the juice shop where police officers usually stand. “Grindr life.
Akash laughs. Fast-forward a few encounters to a Sunday afternoon. This time, Akash opens the app to a charming stranger who asks to meet in a posh neighborhood. After a short walk and a winding staircase, he’s confronted by a man who looks nothing like the well-positioned photos he’s sent. He runs, reminded of other stories—urban tales of a man lured into a Grindr date in Delhi and beaten up or one in which blackmail and public shaming are used as revenge.
Are there options? Barely. Tinder preferences can be adjusted, but the app connects directly with Facebook to display mutual connections. That makes things more transparent and merges a network that often includes family and friends, terrifying for many in anti-anything-but-straight India. A few people direct me to an Indian site that’s been gaining popularity,
Amour is an online dating project that lets people create profiles and meet like-minded individuals across the gender spectrum. It’s available in five languages: English, Hindi, and Kannada. The problem is that it’s still just a database and doesn’t have the investor interest or tech background to match Grindr’s likes. It’s clear about that. “We still DO NOT RULE OUT data leakage to external persons,” Amour writes on its site.
READ MORE :
- Want to learn a foreign language? Download these apps
- Hard-Line Strain of Islam Gains Ground in Indonesia, the World’s Largest Muslim Country
- Uber for farmers: Trringo tractor-hailing app launched in India
- India is Facebook’s top priority, driving engagement to catch up with Google
- Killer regrets blogger Nazim’s murder
