Conciliation – Two Faced Coin

The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act , 2013 also known as PoSH gives the complainant a chance to ponder whether she would be happy closing the case through the process of conciliation. This involves the respondent apologizing to the complainant with no monetary relief.

The reason I choose to call this a two faced coin is as follows.

1. The act may be severe but the aggrieved women may not want to face societal pressures and hence give in to conciliation.
2. The respondent would go scot free in some sense without any severe punishment and would repeat the heinous act again with another lady.
3. The complainant would always find it very difficult to come out of the emotional trauma involved and hence in the real sense “conciliation” would not be the correct resolution .
4. In case the act under question is not severe then a warning would help save the career of the respondent.

It is very difficult for any lady to decide on whether she would like to close the case through conciliation or would like to go through the complete investigation. The IC is responsible to inform the aggrieved woman of this option and must comply with the decision made by her.

In my opinion, conciliation is appropriate only for SH cases which are at the lower end of the spectrum, it is not a silver bullet that can be used to resolve all SH cases.