Decent disclosure

India Inc must provide information on harassment panels

The Union government appears to have turned down a suggestion from Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi to ensure enhanced disclosure by Indian companies on whether they have set up sexual harassment committees to inquire into complaints of women employees. In a letter to Ms Gandhi, Finance and Corporate Affairs Minister Arun Jaitley has said that industry representatives had already expressed their unhappiness with the enhanced disclosures required under the Companies Act, 2013 and adding to these requirements may not be "desirable".

This is a flawed argument, for a number of reasons. First, it is surely unusual for the government to sympathise with grumbles from Indian business about disclosure requirements given that this group has hardly had a sterling reputation for transparency. Second, it does a signal disservice to the cause of women in the workplace and is quite at odds with the prime minister's stated sentiments on this head. And third, this attitude towards sexual harassment in the workplace is inappropriate for a government that hopes to attract foreign direct investment with all the concomitant best practices (including gender parity) it brings in tow.

Ms Gandhi's suggestion should not be seen in the light of a nebulous "good to have" requirement in terms of corporate governance. Mandatory disclosure of the internal complaints committees is a logical extension of the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace Act (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal), 2013, which made it compulsory for all organisations to have such panels in place. As she rightly pointed out, such disclosures would ensure the implementation of this law in its true spirit.

Indeed, there is something disingenuous in corporate India's reluctance on this score. Corporations already have to statutorily disclose a fair amount of detail about their operations, including members of audit committees and statutory panels. Equally, they are ever ready to unilaterally disclose a mass of extraneous self-serving, image-enhancing information as their corporate social responsibility or "sustainability" commitments. Surely, the disclosure of an internal committee for sexual harassment complaints by their women employees cannot be so onerous. It is easy to suspect the reluctance to do so on grounds of being overburdened by disclosure responsibilities as a convenient alibi for inaction. Indeed, it is becoming increasingly clear that the law is being observed more in the breach. A recent survey revealed that 97 per cent of companies are not even aware of the law and officials in Ms Gandhi's ministry attest to receiving many complaints of sexual harassment in firms that lack such committees. As worrying is the fact that few states have set up the district committees stipulated in the Act for women to access in the absence of such internal committees.

All of this suggests that corporate India's signal disinterest in the issue of improving gender parity in the workplace. It is already inherent in the manner in which many companies have fulfilled the requirement for appointment of at least one woman director on their boards (and many have not bothered to do so even now). As a means of enhancing gender parity, this stipulation is admittedly flawed. But where a handful of enlightened companies have chosen to leverage the requirement as an opportunity to bridge the diversity gap by inducting highly qualified women in their own right, the bulk (including government-owned corporations) have met the requirement with token appointments, often getting female relatives with little business experience to fill in. This is not surprising since men still dominate the Indian business world, creating a self-perpetuating culture that only strong laws backed by a committed political leadership can change. In that sense, the government would do well to use the opportunity provided by Ms Gandhi's suggestion for enhanced disclosures on sexual harassment committees and come down on the side of social progress.