Kiran Rao, Ekta Kapoor on producers’ guild committee to look into sexual harassment cases

Until some weeks ago, the film industry did not seem to have any tools to tackle sexual harassment. Now, as the #MeToo movement catches fire in India and with high-profile artistes being exposed as obnoxious characters and exploiters, the industry seems to be keen to set its house in order.

After the Federation of Western India Cine Employees (FWICE) decided to set up a redress committee to tackle complaints of sexual harassment, the Producers’ Guild of India, too, has formed a special committee to deal with the menace. 

The special committee will be headed by Sneha Rajani and includes Ekta Kapoor, Kiran Rao and Jyoti Deshpande. The other members are Apoorva Mehta, Fazila Allana, Kulmeet Makkar, Madhu Bhojwani, Priti Shahani, Rohan Sippy, Vijay Singh and Producers’ Guild president Siddharth Roy Kapur. The committee has seven women.

A meeting was held earlier today with actor-producer Aamir Khan, too, in attendance. The special committee got going on the first day and resolved to immediately 

• Ensure that members are sent a copy of the Gazette of India with notifications issued on sexual harassment of women at the workplace so that they can implement these practices in their establishments at the earliest if they have not done so already.
• Organize specialized workshops with the support of professional agencies to guide members how to implement robust processes and best practices to deal with sexual harassment at the workplaces, whether in their offices or on the sets of their productions.

The guild will organize multiple sessions of these workshops over the coming months to enable all members and their teams to participate.

The newly set-up committee will meet frequently in the coming days to ensure that the effort is sustained until a safer environment is provided for everyone working in the film industry.

The guild, the FWICE and other film workers' and artistes' unions have had to look at this issue seriously after some big names have been accused. Veteran actor Alok Nath has been accused of raping writer Vinta Nana while filmmaker Vikas Bahl, actor Rajat Kapoor and singer Kailash Kher have been accused of sexual misconduct by a host of people. Actress Tanushree Dutt is fighting against actor Nana Patekar after the latter allegedly molested her on the sets of the film Horn Ok Pleassss in 2008.