Click to play videoNew Delhi: Alka shudders when she recalls her 14 months at one of India's top audit firm, KPMG. She held a senior managerial position till November 2006 when her services were terminated, she alleges, without reason.
"I was in KPMG and I found the behaviour, embarrassing, humiliating and obscene. Some of his behaviour that made me extremely uncomfortable and I asked for a change of my performance manager. On paper they did change it but my immediate boss continued to be my reprisal. I have followed all protocol raised it with the CEO. I raised it with the international ethics committee and I had offered to resign in 2006,†says Alka Pandey (name changed).
Alka says KPMG India has breached its own directives on sexual harassment.
“The induction manual also says that one must comply with rules,†she says
KPMG, however, denies all the allegations. In a statement, KPMG says, ‘As soon as we received the complaint, we set up a complaints committee. However, she expressed her inability to appear before the committee as she was going on a vacation. The Committee provided an alternative set of dates. She replied expressing reservations about the constitution of the Committee.’
Alka's case isn't isolated. Sexual harassment at workplace is commonplace.
- In 1988, a woman IAS officer, Rupan Deol Bajaj, had filed a complaint against supercop K P S Gill.
- In 1992, a case of sexual harassment in Air India made the news when an assistant flight purser misbehaved with an air-hostess.
- In 2001, the Supreme Court took note of sexual harrasment of two women IAS officers by a state minister in Kerala.
But what really amounts to sexual harassment at workplace? While hearing a case of gang rape by a Rajasthan government employee in 1997, the Supreme Court defined sexual harassment.
It said, sexual harassment is any form of physical contact, demand or request for sexual behaviour, sexually-coloured remarks, showing of pornography, any unwelcome physical, verbal or non verbal conduct: examples-leering, cracking dirty jokes, making sexual remarks about a person's body, amounts to sexual harassment
Even as cases of sexual harassment go up by the day, Parliament is dragging its feet on passing the Protection of Women Against Sexual Harassment at the Workplace Bill 2007.
If passed, it would be India's first law against sexual harassment at workplace.
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