Almost five years after Justice K. Hema submitted her report on working conditions of women in the Malayalam film industry to the Pinarayi Vijayan-led Kerala government, it has finally been made public.

Following a two-year investigation of actors, directors, producers, cameramen, screenwriters, make-up artists, hairdressers and costume designers, among others, the release of the report coincides with a renewed focus on workplace safety.

The rape and murder of a 31-year-old doctor on the premises of Kolkata’s RG Kar Hospital, where she was working, has sparked nationwide outrage and prompted an ex officio hearing in the Supreme Court of India. The top court has ordered the formation of a task force to look into issues of occupational safety for medical personnel. The inability to provide safe working conditions to women deprives them of equality in the workplace, Chief Justice Dhananjay Chandrachud stressed.

(Read more about the Supreme Court hearing here and here)

The Hema Committee takes a look at another workplace – the Malayalam film industry – and reveals an ugly picture of rampant sexual exploitation.

Yes, the casting couch is real. Yes, it is common to ask for sexual favors in exchange for work. Yes, refusing to comply or, worse, attempting to break the silence can lead to a ban from work. Yes, there is a powerful, all-male “mafia” that enforces these conditions. Yes, there is a wage gap between men and women. And yes, even basic facilities like women’s toilets are lacking.

Despite the deletions supposedly to protect privacy, the report contains sickening details about drunk actors banging on their co-stars’ hotel room doors during off-station filming; about a strict law of omerta that prohibits even men from complaining; and about workplaces so toxic that young women bring their mothers and older relatives to work with them just to feel safe.

Women do not speak out, partly because they know it would be the end of their careers and partly because there is no forum for redress. Some are embarrassed because, as public figures, they can face various forms of harassment, including death threats and online abuse. Others have not even told their own parents and friends about the extent of their abuse, the report said.

(A PDF of the Hema Committee report is available to Bar&Bench subscribers here and to LiveLaw subscribers here.)

The greater rot

Almost 16 years after the Supreme Court issued its famous Vishakha guidelines in 1997 to protect women from sexual harassment at work, Parliament finally passed a law in 2013.

Earlier this week, The Economic Times reported that India’s largest companies saw a 40.4% increase in the number of sexual harassment complaints filed in fiscal 2024 compared to the previous year. This, the news report said, was due to greater awareness of the law as well as a culture in some companies that encourages the reporting of such cases.

Yet in far too many workplaces – from the informal sector to the media, from hospitals to domestic work, from factories to the film industry and even in the justice system – sexual abuse in the workplace remains commonplace.

The Hema Committee report is unprecedented as no other film industry in India has been subjected to similar scrutiny, although talk of the infamous “casting couch” – including in Bollywood – has been widespread for years.

The biggest reckoning came during the #MeToo movement in India in 2018, when allegations were made against actors like Nana Patekar and Alok Nath, and director Sajid Khan. But in the end, the police investigation was closed and the allegations came to nothing.

“We failed because twice as many women remained silent as spoke out,” says Vinta Nanda, a filmmaker and author and one of the leading voices of the MeToo movement who has accused Alok Nath of rape.

Vinta says she had a hard time finding work in the industry and is now the editor of an online publication, The Daily Eye. But what the Hema Committee report says about the Malayalam film industry applies to other film industries, including Bollywood. “The report is applicable to any other film industry,” she says. “Women are afraid to speak out because the consequences are devastating.”

Will the Hema Committee report have an impact on other film industries? Much will depend on how the Kerala government, which simply withheld the report for nearly five years, will respond.

These measures do not inspire confidence. Chief Minister Vijayan has now declared that legal action will be taken if the victims come forward. But what is stopping him from setting up a special investigation team or acknowledging sexual assault and asking the state police to take legal action?

To place the burden of responsibility on the victims, whose livelihoods are at stake, who were afraid to give evidence before the committee and who, in all likelihood, have no confidence in a government that withheld the report for five years, is really asking too much.

Collective power

Chaired by retired judge K Hema and two other members, actress T Sarada and retired IAS officer KB Valsalakumari, the Hema Committee was formed in 2017 after an actress was raped in a moving car in Kochi on her way home from work. The crime was filmed and allegedly committed at the behest of Dileep, a leading film star, as a sort of perverse revenge by the actress for a perceived misbehaviour.

The case is still ongoing and Dileep, one of the accused, is out on bail.

But the crime was so shocking that 18 women, including actors, directors, producers and technicians, came together to form the Women in Cinema Collective. “We felt the need to create systems that would ensure women’s safety,” Bina Paul, a film editor and founding member of the WCC, told me at the time.

It was the WCC that called for a task force to look into the working conditions of women in the film industry, which led to the formation of the Hema Committee. It was, in turn, the WCC that filed a petition in the Supreme Court demanding that the Sexual Harassment Act be followed by the Malayalam film industry as well. The industry was hesitant for a long time – how would you define the workplace? How would you define the employer-employee relationship – but in February 2022, award-winning film director Senna Hegde announced that she would set up a grievance committee for her film 1744WA, the first Malayalam film to have such a committee.

Also in 2021, the WCC presented the government with a document on “cinema policy”.

(I wrote about the WCC and its role in bringing the Malayalam film industry into compliance in a previous Mind the Gap here.)

“It’s been an uphill battle,” Bina Paul told me over the phone after the report was released this week. Work has dried up because “we’re seen as troublemakers.” But, she adds, “on the whole, we’re really happy that the report is here. I just hope it will have an impact outside of Malayalam cinema as well.”

The following article is an excerpt from this week’s HT Mind the Gap. Subscribe here.