India's top firms report zero sexual harassment case, but there's a catch

Zero complaints may be an indicator of a lack of the requisite mechanism to allow for such reporting and capture such complaints

More than a third of India’s top 100 companies based on market capitalisation did not have a single woman employee complain about sexual harassment, data for 2017-2018 shows, prompting experts to fear that the organisations may not have adequate redressal systems.

Six of such companies, which employed more than 500 women as of March 2018, did not get a single sexual harassment complaint in the last three financial years--a trend that seems incredible at a time of the #metoo movement. Coal India, Reliance Industries, Aurobindo Pharma, Bajaj Finance, Divi’s Laboratories and NTPC together employed a total of 24,960 women as of March 2018.

E-mail queries sent to the six companies remained unanswered.

Audit firms such as KPMG believe the trend indicates the lack of a requisite mechanism to hear complaints. “As most of the companies have mentioned nil complaints recorded, it raises doubts over the mechanisms established to capture such complaints,” the audit firm said in its July 2017 analysis of Business Responsibility reporting of top 100 BSE and NSE listed companies.  

Nayreen Daruwalla, programme director at Prevention of Violence against Women and Children for SNEHA Foundation, often receives calls from companies seeking an external member for their internal complaints committees (ICC). “Many people call and say they want to create a committee, but they tell us do not worry there are no complaints,” Daruwalla said, adding that setting up the committee is seen as a formality.

Daruwalla's experience may not be rare, as one-third of India’s top companies did not see a single complaint being reported. Business Standard sourced sexual harassment complaints figures from the business responsibility reporting (BRR) section of the annual reports of S&P BSE 100 companies. In the financial year 2018, as many as 93 companies disclosed data on the number of complaints reported. Of these, 36 companies gave their women employee count and reported zero complaints about sexual harassment. The number was similar in the financial year 2016, when 36 of the 83 companies disclosed data that said there were zero complaints. For the financial year 2017, 50 of the 97 companies that shared data reported zero complaints.

Daruwalla agrees zero complaints means a redressal mechanism is lacking. “The process takes time; companies do not want to get into this mess, which in turn discourages women to report cases. Even if there is a committee, there is no guarantee that it will work,” she said.

It may be a long walk before a strong mechanism is put in place as companies even struggle to follow a standardised format of reporting sexual harassment cases under the Business Responsibility Report format.

Larsen & Toubro,  the country’s largest engineering conglomerate, for instance in the financial year 2018, reported no complaint under Principle 3 of the BRR format and two complaints under Principle 5 of the same report. In response to a query, L&T said the company has been reporting data pertaining to permanent employees under Principle 5 and for contract employees under Principle 3.  

Expert opinion differs on how such differences are to be handled.

“The difference in national voluntary guidelines (NVG) between Principle 3 and 5 is that Principle 3 looks internal to the organisation, and Principle 5 looks external (though not explicit),” said Santosh Jayaraman, partner, KPMG.

Others like Daruwalla opine there is no such division to be followed.

However, L&T’s report does not mention the difference or explain it in any way.

Certain other companies like Nestle India’s BRR is plagued with discrepancies related to pending and reported cases. The company chose to report only the number of pending cases as part of its BRR for 2016 and 2017, which was zero. The company didn't mention fresh cases in the same section though it is required. It had five fresh reported cases in 2017 and two in 2016, though it chose to disclose it in a different section of the two annual reports.

 “As per (BRR) format, they have to report both. Complaints registered in a year and number of complaints pending,” Jayaraman said.

 In another instance, Cadila Healthcare chose to report zero complaints about its own BRR, while it recorded one sexual harassment case in the director’s report for its wholly-owned subsidiary Zydus Healthcare in the last financial year. “We did have a case that was reported last year to our internal complaints committee, which has been formed as per the Vishakha Committee guidelines. As this was a case pertaining to Zydus Healthcare, it was included in the director’s report of the company. Zydus Healthcare is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Cadila Healthcare. The ICC conducted an inquiry and the necessary action was taken which led to the termination of the employee,” Cadila said in its response.

“There is no clarity on this. The disclosure under Principle 3 does not clearly bring out a requirement to include subsidiaries, whereas Principle number 1 question 1 clearly asks whether it includes the whole group, joint ventures,” Jayaraman added.

One more reason contributing to the low number of complaints reported is the abysmal representation of women in India’s workforce. “In case of zero complaints, one needs to check how rigorously are the rules followed, what the male-female ratio,” said Shriram Subramanian, managing director with InGovern, a proxy advisory firm.

According to a Business Standard analysis, the median value for female workforce participation was not even in double-digits for 2017-18. It came in at 9.11 per cent, for a total of 67 of these companies which had comparable data over three years.  

However, for companies such as Coal India, the problem runs deeper than just being a number game. The country’s largest coal miner employed over 20,000 women as of March 2018 but has not reported.