Promoting a wolf culture

What message did The Energy and Resources Institute (Teri) send to its own employees and to workplaces all over India when it promoted R.K. Pachauri to the post of executive vice-chairman Facing mounting criticism, Mr Pachauri has now been sent on indefinite leave. But much damage has been done.

Mr Pachauri was found guilty of sexual harassment by an internal complaints committee (ICC) in 2015. He is facing a criminal complaint of sexual harassment from one former employee, and another former employee has come forward recently to make a complaint.

By promoting him, Teri was telling its women employees that sexual harassment — persistent unwanted sexual advances — by a boss at the workplace is something they must put up with in silence. A powerful boss, they were saying, is entitled to demand sexual favours from younger women employees and that it is no big deal. And by remaining silent on the promotion by Teri, which receives government funding, the Government of India was giving India’s women this same message.

The woman who came forward to complain recently, has said that she was laughed at when she had sought to complain. The 29-year-old research assistant who complained a year ago, was forced to quit her job because Teri made it clear that it would protect the interests of the accused, Mr Pachauri, and not the young woman employee. Teri’s governing council took no cognisance of the findings of the ICC. When they replaced Mr Pachauri with a new director-general, they made no mention of the sexual harassment charges that necessitated the change; rather they claimed the change had been made in the normal course of things. And they then proceeded to bring Mr Pachauri back, creating an even more powerful post in order to rehabilitate him. After Mr Pachauri went on leave, Teri appointed former finance secretary Ashok Chawla as the new chairperson.

The conduct of the Delhi Police, too, in the matter is notable. Under the Criminal Law Amendment Act (2013), the amended Section 309 of the Code of Criminal Procedure mandates that in rape trials “the proceedings shall be continued day-to-day” and “as far as possible be completed within a period of two months from the date of filing of the chargesheet”. The complaint against Mr Pachauri was filed with the police in February 2015. Yet, till date, the chargesheet has not been prepared. And while the second complainant had repeatedly offered to make a statement in support of the first complainant, the police has failed to record her statement. What conclusion can one draw from this, except that the Delhi Police did not wish to strengthen the case against the powerful Mr Pachauri, and is only willing to act in cases where weaker men of lesser consequence are accused. The Delhi Police may well be trying to wear down the complainant with delays and deliberate failure in its duty.

Proving the hollowness of its “Beti Bachao” slogan, the Central government continues to fund an institution that has brazenly violated the law against sexual harassment by punishing the complainant and rewarding the accused.

The Pachauri episode is by no means an isolated aberration. Instead, it can be said to be the norm in most workplaces. Complaints committees against sexual harassment, even if they exist on paper, are often passive and stacked with “friends” of the management.

So women employees are not encouraged to file complaints at all, to make sure the institution can boast of a “clean record” on sexual harassment. A woman student who accused a teacher at St. Stephen’s College of sexual harassment has jeopardised her research, her peace of mind, her career, while the accused is supported by the college principal and management.

A PA to the acting principal at Atma Ram Sanatan Dharm College in Delhi University accused her boss of sexual harassment only to find that she continues to be denied work appropriate to her position, even under a new principal. Her harassment, in other words, continues.

Institutions like the Jawaharlal Nehru University, with strong and fair complaints committees that inspire trust in women to come forward to complain safely and expect justice, are castigated in the media for “the highest number of sexual harassment complaints”. Meanwhile, institutions that have been able to deter complainants, and where awareness of the existence of complaints’ committees is suppressed, are able to boast of “low complaints” or even “no complaints”.

Widespread contractualisation and casualisation of work in India, together with a systematic undermining of labour laws and of unions by governments has made workplaces even more unsafe for women. Women workers fear that they will lose their jobs if they protest sexual harassment. If Teri, with the media eye on it, can push out complainants and promote the accused, you can imagine the situation in factories, municipalities and other workplaces ignored by the media.

When Mulayam Singh Yadav says “boys will be boys”, and they need not face punishment for rape, the English-speaking elite class feels outrage followed by a sense of superiority.

But isn’t Teri also saying “boys will be boys” Aren’t Tarun Tejpal’s friends also saying “boys will be boys” Aren’t they saying that it is wrong to criminalise what, according to them, is “normal” behaviour for a “red-blooded male” When the same section of people tell each other that “men are now forced to be afraid” because “women can complain about every little thing”, are they not saying that men are entitled to force themselves sexually on women

Sexual harassment turns workplaces into hell for women. But again and again it seems that employers will tell women that complaining will only intensify the heat in hell and bring neither relief nor justice.

The writer is secretary of the All-India Progressive Women’s Association