PoSH, a question

Serious concerns over corporate India's workplace harassment framework

- BY POOJA BIRAIA

For over a decade now, India’s corporate sector has operated under the framework of the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013, aka the PoSH Act, mandating internal committees, time-bound inquiries and organisational accountability. While the system appears robust on paper, cases like the one emerging from the Tata Consultancy Service's Nashik office suggest a more complicated reality.

Despite multiple FIRs being filed in the TCS case, alleging sexual harassment, coercion, emotional manipulation and religious intimidation, the company stated that none of the complainants had approached its internal committee or PoSH channels over the past several years. This gap between formal mechanisms and actual reporting raises a critical question as to why employees continue to bypass internal systems designed specifically for them.

"Most women don't report at all. They leave their jobs. Others choose to ignore the behaviour initially because it feels easier than confronting it," says Audrey D'Mello, director, Majlis, an NGO that provides legal aid to women. "But ignoring often emboldens the perpetrator, leading to a more hostile work environment. In many cases, women who complain are either pushed out or eventually leave. Sometimes they are formally terminated later under the guise of ‘incompetence’. There is a stigma attached to being a complainant—women are labelled difficult, problematic or worse. That fear alone prevents many from coming forward, and in workplaces, the added layer of financial dependence and professional risk makes speaking up even harder.”