New Delhi: With the focus back women and how they are regarded in India in light of the ‘Bois Locker Room’ chatroom reveal, the opposition Congress has asked the Centre on steps taken to ensure women’s wellbeing since the #MeToo movement in late 2018.
With the movement leading to the resignation of the Minister of State for External Affairs, M.J. Akbar, the Centre had announced a committee of group of ministers (GoM) to deliberate and arrive at the changes required in the existing legal framework to address sexual harassment at work and their time-bound implementation.
Among others, the GoM included the women ministers of the Modi government – Nirmala Sitharaman, Smriti Irani and Maneka Gandhi – besides the then HRD minister Ramesh Pokhriyal and surface transport minister Nitin Gadkari. Then home minister Rajnath Singh had headed the GoM.
Also read: Govt Dissolves #MeToo Panel Quietly, Refuses to Divulge Details: Report
However, the committee, formed on October 24, 2018, met just once in eight months before it was wound up. Three days after the news portal The Quint reported on its dissolution, based on a RTI response from the government, the Centre, on July 24, 2019, “reconstituted” the GoM with Amit Shah, the new home minister, heading it.
The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) reportedly said that the GoM would recommend action required for effective implementation of the existing provisions to address issues related to sexual harassment at the workplace.
According to a report in The Hindu in January, which quoted a senior official at the MHA, the GoM “has finalised its recommendations”.
The report said the recommendations “will be put up for comments from the public”.
However, no such recommendations have been put up by the MHA so far, for public opinion.
In a letter to home minister Shah on May 5, the national president of All India Mahila Congress, Sushmita Dev, wrote:
“In October 2018, in the aftermath of the #MeToo Movement, the government constituted a committee to address the issue of sexual harassment at the workplace and submit a report in three months on strengthening the legal framework.
“That report never saw the light of the day as the entire committee was reconstituted in July 2019 and to be headed by you, but we are yet to see any report or recommendations on the same which only shows the lackadaisical attitude of the government towards safety and security of women.”
Dev also “stressed on another committee to work with schools” and requested the minister “to pay heed to the current situation and address the lacunae in the law when addressing secular abuse and violence pertaining to minors”.
On contacted, Dev said she has not got any response from the government yet. “Does this government respond to anything? It is increasingly being proved that the Centre’s ‘Beti Bachao’ slogan was a hoax. The GoM committee was formed only as a face saver in the height of the #MeToo Movement,” she told Khabri Baba.
Asked about the delay on the government’s part in coming up with the recommendations, Rituparna Chatterjee, journalist and activist who is also writing a book on the #MeToo Movement, told Khabri Baba:
“The hurried announcement of the (first) committee was because of #MeToo gaining steam in October 2018 and continuing through December and January (2019), right before the general elections.
“There was a lot of scrutiny of public figures, including of elected officials. As the mood, and subsequently news headlines shifted to post poll politics, the feverish need to appease the electorate of women dulled considerably. The fact that MJ (Akbar) was named could have been a reason for the radio silence of the ruling party (BJP) and the lack of an official response to the movement.”
