Almost 5 years after Justice Ok Hema submitted her report on the working circumstances for girls within the Malayalam movie business to the Pinarayi Vijayan-led Kerala authorities, it has lastly been made public.
By means of a two-year lengthy examination of actors, administrators, producers, cinematographers, script-writers, make-up artists, hairstylists, and costume designers, amongst others, the discharge of the report coincides with a renewed deal with office security.
The rape and homicide of a 31-year-old physician throughout the premises of the RG Kar hospital in Kolkata the place she labored has precipitated nationwide outrage and a suo motu listening to by the Supreme Court docket of India. The apex courtroom has ordered the formation of a taskforce to look into office questions of safety for medical professionals. The lack to offer secure working situation for girls deprives them of equality within the office, Chief Justice Dhananjay Chandrachud identified.
[Read more about the Supreme Court hearing here and here]
The Hema Committee appears at one other office—the Malayalam movie business and blows open an unpleasant image of rampant sexual exploitation.
Sure, the casting sofa is actual. Sure, it’s routine to ask for sexual favours in trade for work. Sure, refusal to conform or, worse, an try to interrupt the silence can lead to being banned from work. Sure, there’s a highly effective all-male ‘mafia’ that enforces these circumstances. Sure, there may be wage disparity between women and men. And, sure, even such primary services as bogs for girls are lacking.
Regardless of the redactions, ostensibly to guard privateness, the report comprises stomach-churning particulars of drunk actors banging on their co-star’s lodge room doorways on outstation shoots. Of a strict regulation of omerta the place even males can’t complain. And of workplaces so poisonous that younger girls take their moms and older kinfolk alongside to work simply to really feel secure.
Girls don’t converse up partly as a result of they know it is going to be the tip of their profession and partly as a result of there isn’t a discussion board for redressal. Some are embarrassed as a result of they’re public figures who could be subjected to varied types of harassment together with threats to life and on-line abuse. Others haven’t even shared the extent of their abuse with their very own mother and father and associates, the report finds.
[A PDF of the Hema Committee report is available to Bar&Bench subscribers here and LiveLaw subscribers here]
The bigger rot
Almost 16 years after the Supreme Court docket issued its well-known Vishakha tips in 1997 to guard girls from office sexual harassment, Parliament lastly handed a regulation in 2013.
Earlier this week, reviews The Financial Occasions, India’s high corporations recorded a 40.4% improve within the variety of sexual harassment complaints filed in fiscal yr 2024 in comparison with the earlier yr. This, in accordance with the information report, is attributed to higher consciousness of the regulation in addition to a tradition in some corporations that encourages reporting of such circumstances.
However in far too many workplaces, from the unorganised sector to media; from hospitals to home work; from factories to the movie business and even throughout the judiciary, office sexual abuse stays routine.
The Hema Committee report is unprecedented as a result of no different movie business in India has been put by an identical examination, although discuss of the notorious “casting sofa”, together with in Bollywood, has been rampant for years.
The closest reckoning got here throughout India’s 2018 #MeToo motion with accusations levelled towards actors like Nana Patekar and Alok Nath in addition to director Sajid Khan. However, ultimately, police circumstances had been closed and the accusations got here to nothing.
“We failed as a result of twice the variety of girls as those that spoke up remained silent,” says Vinta Nanda, film-maker and author and one of many major voices within the MeToo motion who accused Alok Nath of rape.
Vinta says she has discovered it onerous to get work throughout the business and now edits a web based publication, The Each day Eye. However, she says, what the Hema Committee report says about Malayalam movie business holds true for different movie industries, together with Bollywood. “The report could be extrapolated onto another movie business,” she says. “The ladies are afraid to talk up as a result of the results are dire.”
Will the Hema Committee report have a ripple impact on different movie industries? A lot will rely on how the Kerala authorities, the identical authorities that merely sat on the report for shut to 5 years, chooses to reply.
Its actions don’t encourage confidence. Chief minister Vijayan has now stated authorized proceedings can be initiated if the victims come ahead. However what’s stopping him from establishing a particular investigation group, or from recognising sexual assault and asking state police to provoke authorized proceedings?
Placing the onus on the victims whose livelihoods are at stake, who had been afraid to depose earlier than the committee, and who in all chance lack confidence in a authorities that sat on the report for 5 years, is basically anticipating an excessive amount of.
Collective energy
Headed by retired decide Ok Hema with two different members, actress T Sarada and retired IAS officer KB Valsalakumari, the Hema Committee was arrange in 2017 after an actress was raped in a transferring automobile in Kochi whereas returning dwelling from work. The crime was filmed and, allegedly dedicated on the behest of Dileep, a number one movie star, as some type of perverse vengeance from the actress for a perceived flawed doing.
The case is ongoing and Dileep, one of many accused, is out on bail.
However the crime was so surprising that 18 girls together with actors, administrators, producers and technicians got here collectively to kind the Girls in Cinema Collective. “We felt the necessity to arrange programs to make sure the safety of ladies,” Bina Paul, a movie editor and founding member of WCC had instructed me then.
It was the WCC that demanded a process drive to look into the working circumstances for girls within the movie business that led to the Hema Committee. It was the WCC once more that filed a case within the excessive courtroom asking for the sexual harassment regulation to be adopted by the Malayalam movie business. The business hemmed and hawed—how would you outline office? How would the employer-employee relationship be outlined—however in February 2022, award-winning movie director Senna Hegde introduced she was establishing a complaints committee for her movie, 1744WA, the primary Malayalam movie to have such a committee.
Once more, in 2021, the WCC submitted a “cinema coverage” doc to the federal government.
[I wrote about the WCC and its role in making the Malayalam film industry more compliant with the law in an earlier Mind the Gap here]
“It’s been a tricky battle,” Bina Paul instructed me on the cellphone after the report was launched this week. Work has dried up as a result of “we’re seen as trouble-makers.” However, she provides, “On the entire, we’re actually comfortable that the report is out. I solely hope that it’s going to have an effect exterior of Malayalam cinema.”
The next article is an excerpt from this week’s HT Thoughts the Hole. Subscribe right here.
