Pointing to the hoarding, Khushboo and her friends burst into fits of nervous laughter before saying they had never seen the hoarding before. “We just come here for the ATM,” Khushboo says.
“WHAT IS PU CASH? I am hearing it for the first time. Usually when we feel like we have been harassed, we just discuss it amongst us and the issue does not go beyond that,” claims Khushboo, a second year student of Fashion Technology, standing in front of one of the few hoardings displaying the university’s sexual harassment guidelines, tucked between the entrance of the Student Centre staircase and an ATM on the ground floor of the building.
Pointing to the hoarding, Khushboo and her friends burst into fits of nervous laughter before saying they had never seen the hoarding before. “We just come here for the ATM,” Khushboo says.
According to the guidelines prescribed in the handbook on the “Sexual Harassment of Women in the Workplace Act, 2013”, it is the responsibility of the internal complaints committee, which in this case is PU CASH (Panjab University Committee against Sexual Harassment), to “ensure awareness and orientation on the issue”. The committee is also tasked with ensuring that they “create and communicate a detailed policy”. As of now, seven years since the Act has been passed, PU CASH has failed to implement both these tenets. “We are yet to truly function properly. There are a lot of issues with our work, and we are aware of that, but I guess it would take some more time to make sure everything is up to the mark,” admits a committee member on condition of anonymity.
Lack of awareness
“We know we have to disseminate information and make everyone aware of the policy. We have even sent messages to the Dean Student Welfare and asked for the hoarding on CASH to be placed across campus,” claims Professor Manvinder Kaur, chairperson of the CASH Committee. She says the DSW office has also sent instructions to all chairpersons asking them to place posters and hold awareness sessions in all departments. “But again we can only recommend, we are not responsible for enforcement. That is up to the higher authorities. If needed, we will of course send out the message again and make sure more awareness is spread across departments,” Kaur says.
Apart from the hoarding tucked next to the Student Centre staircase, there are two more placed in public spaces on campus. However, none are placed outside hostels on campus while the anti-ragging hoardings are up everywhere. “If I speak for the boys’ hostel, I guess the information is not necessary for men. It is more necessary for women, because they need to seek redressal and be equipped with the information,” claims a senior warden from campus.
The Dean Student Welfare for Women, Professor Neena Caplash, however, feels that awareness is necessary for men as well. “We have made sure to put one hoarding between girls’ hostel 3 and 4, but yes, we can do an audit and see other public places where we can put more hoardings,” says Caplash. “After all, the men will also suffer repercussions if they are not aware of what sexual harassment entails.”
As for creating awareness on sexual harassment and the role of the CASH committee, most departments are yet to be apprised of the guidelines. “There is barely any awareness. The problem is that it all depends on the chairperson whether they believe it’s important to disseminate information on it. Some believe it’s insignificant. No one really cares,” says a student from the philosophy department. The PU CASH chairperson claims that the autonomy of each department makes it impossible to interfere and ensure that proper conduct is followed to create awareness. “Even when an untoward incident occurs wherein we should be informed, departments often try and quash the complaint at their own level, fearing that their name will be besmirched,” Kaur says, adding that it is disheartening to see lack of sensitivity towards woman’s dignity.
Missing CASH policy
“Before they conduct any awareness drive, they should at least have a consolidated policy to disseminate information about. Where is that policy?” asks a senior faculty member from the university who wishes to remain anonymous. “Are the committee members themselves aware of the Act and accompanied guidelines, which ask for creation and wide circulation of an internal policy on sexual harassment?”
Members of the committee have claimed that the earlier chairperson, Professor Nishtha Jaswal, who has retired from PU, had created a policy and submitted it to the Registrar’s office. “Now it is the office’s responsibility to circulate the policy,” claims current chairperson Kaur. However, the Registrar’s office is yet to find the policy in their archive.
Jaswal, who is now the Vice-Chancellor of Himachal Pradesh National Law University, claims a committee was formed under her chairmanship to create a policy which was then submitted to the Registrar’s office. “The policy was created by us in 2016. The handbook on the Act prescribes general guidelines, but these have to be contextualised for the university and its atmosphere. Furthermore, the Act does not give clarity on various issues such as the role of student representatives, or what punishments should be added to the service rules for cases of sexual harassment. So having an internally consolidated policy is essential,” claims Jaswal. “When I left office, I submitted all that I had, documents and all, either to the new office-bearers or to the Registrar’s office.”
No operational designated space
At the committee’s insistence, a space was allotted to PU CASH to carry out its proceedings and hold meetings in January this year. However, the space, which consists of a few cabins on the top floor of the Guru Tej Bahadur Hall, is not operational as yet. “The place is not suitable for our proceedings. We need an open space with the right furniture, so we asked them to break down the compartments and create a larger space and add the furniture we need,” Kaur says.
According to the guidelines on the Act, it is essential for the “employer to provide necessary facilities to the Internal Committee or the Local Committee, as the case may be, for dealing with the complaint and conducting an inquiry”. “Apart from the committee members themselves, all we have is a clerk. Furthermore, there is no office where archives can be properly maintained and meetings convened. We mostly meet in the chairperson’s office, and I guess the files are kept there as well,” says a member of the committee. The member adds that granting PU CASH a space in a more central location such as the Student Centre would have made the committee more visible and accessible.
“We don’t have a proper space, so every time there is an issue, we rifle through a whole bunch of old cases and refer to the Act and its guidelines again. The procedure is not proper. If they give us the space and set it up in the way we want them to, we could function more efficiently for sure,” says Kaur. Apart from the space, the committee did not even have a budget out of which to pay an honorarium to its external members until last year.
Student representation
What makes the committee even more obscure and unapproachable is the fact that it does not have any student representatives. “I have been asking them to place someone as representative. They could let me sit in as president of the council, but they don’t even allow that,” claims Chetan Chowdhury, president of the PU Campus Students’ Council. Kannupriya, former president of PUCSC, had also asked for student representation on the committee on countless occasions, but to no avail.
“We could have a student representative but it is not in our power to nominate these students. This will go through the Syndicate and Senate. Furthermore, the students should not hold any political office if they are to be nominated,” Kaur says, adding that one of the shortcomings of the Act is that it does not regulate anything regarding student representation. “If that was the case, we would have complied and had students on the committee from the beginning.”
However, even though the Act does not state anything regarding student representation, a notice issued by UGC in 2015 directed universities to elect three student representatives to the committee via transparent procedure while addressing cases involving students. According to a member, the majority of cases heard by PU CASH involve students, yet no students have been part of the current committee ever since it was constituted in 2016. Furthermore, most public universities, including Jawaharlal Nehru University and Delhi University as well as a few private universities, have student representatives elected to their Internal Complaints Committee.
“I hate to say it, but the attitude that Panjab University has towards PU CASH is that it’s an insignificant committee. No one takes its role and proceedings seriously, and we can see that in the way it functions,” says the committee member who wishes to remain anonymous.