GoM woke up late to #MeToo

The government seems to have woken up very late to the #MeToo movement in India that has taken off in right earnest and has managed to topple one prominent figure from the Union ministry itself. Having dragged its feet on the issue involving the predatory behaviour of its junior minister for external affairs and then bowed to the building pressures of the accusations, the Centre has reacted slowly in setting up the high-power panel to look at the issue of workplace sexual harassment holistically.

The panel, to be headed by the home minister rather than any of the powerful women in the Cabinet, is to chart out a new course within three months. However, considering the despicable comments of minister Smriti Irani on the issue of menstruation with regard to the entry of women in the Sabarimala shrine, it is possible to judge how politics intrudes even into such a subject as a period, which is to be best described and accepted as just a physiological phenomenon in a woman’s life cycle of ovulation.

The Verma Committee that examined issues in the wake of the horrific Nirbhaya gangrape and murder of 2012 had also recommended various steps for the protection of women everywhere, of which many remain on paper. Amid the ongoing momentum of a virulent campaign in which many men are being outed as closet predators, the need to define stringent laws to deal with harassment of women in the workplace and in public spaces has become very important. A society in which men are seen to behave so desperately as to rape little children as well as a 100-year-old woman, laws as well as their enforcement becomes an absolute necessity.