Searching for a silver lining

When I dug into the case, I found the company had ticked all the right boxes. Yet the system failed, completely and utterly

The Indian Express ran a signed article by Anjuli Pandit this Thursday where she narrates her horror story of dealing with Rakesh Sarna, one of the most powerful CEOs inside the Tata group, back in 2015. Sarna was the then CEO of Indian Hotels, a rock-star performer effecting a major turnaround, and therefore, considered untouchable. According to Pandit, more than just his repeated sexual advances that she had to deal with, the sheer callousness with which her case was dealt with in the group at all levels is simply breathtaking. Everyone, according to her, including board members, Tata Group Executive Council members and the office of the chairman, apparently advised her to quietly resign — and not pursue the case.

This is actually the second time I have surfaced this case in my Strategic Intent column. Back in 2016, I had done a wider piece on sexual harassment, but started it with a reference to Pandit’s travails, albeit anonymously. I had based my column on a piece written by journalist and author Manu Joseph in Huffington Post. At that stage, Joseph had masked her identity. But with just a little bit of digging, it was amply clear whom he was referring to and indeed what the back story was.

Pandit understandably took three years to come out with her version. Along the way, one of the members of the complaints committee at Indian Hotels even approached her potential employer to damage her chances of securing employment. As she explains in detail, she had exhausted all viable routes for redressal, including approaching the media. When i wrote my column, I was told that a senior woman journalist at India’s leading business daily had all the details of the sordid case, but chose to either bury the story or wasn’t allowed to go ahead by her editor. In effect, it was a total and complete breakdown of a system that apparently had all the right ingredients. 

When I dug into the case, I found the company had ticked all the right boxes. They had appointed senior women of stature on the board. Employee sensitisation programmes had been done by expert trainers across the board. The internal complaints committee was qualified and trained to handle cases. Plus, Indian Hotels was part of a group that was known to pursue the highest standards of probity for decades. And yet the system failed, completely and utterly. Because people who were supposed to run them failed to show spine, when it really mattered. And show that it didn’t matter how powerful an executive was, he would have to play by the rules of conduct. Other than some perfunctory statements to the media and analysts, Indian Hotels simply didn’t come clean publicly on what they had found — and the steps they had taken to clean up the system. 

Now, this isn’t uncommon. In such crisis situations, companies tend to freeze and lose common sense. And if they are surrounded by wrong advisors and spin doctors, they tend to pursue any or all these options: Hide behind confidentiality, threaten legal action, block media coverage or look to discredit the whistleblower.

This is exactly what had happened four years ago, when some of us wrote to Ratan Tata and Cyrus Mistry about Charudutt Deshpande’s mysterious suicide in December 2014, while he was employed with Tata Steel. Mistry promptly instituted an inquiry committee. Yet despite several requests from the Mumbai Press Club and other quarters, they never made the report public — thereby effectively denying the closure that was perhaps due to Charu’s family and friends.

Back to this Taj case. After my column on sexual harassment in 2016 appeared, I was reliably told by insiders that it raised a huge ruckus inside the group. The matter was escalated to Ratan Tata. And the case was once again reopened. I don’t know what came of it, but if Pandit’s account is anything to go by, she neither saw any delayed justice delivered nor was her complaint ever properly acknowledged.

The most insidious thing in this saga was when Cyrus Mistry was unceremoniously removed on October 24, 2016, the group was desperate to gain public approval for the sacking. I was repeatedly sent multiple messages that clearly hinted that one of the reasons for Mistry’s removal was his poor handling of the Sarna sexual harassment case. I obviously ignored them, putting it down as yet another case of spin doctoring, conjured up by one of its flamboyant external lobbyists.

One last point: Pandit’s experience with the internal committee is no different from what some of us went through when we deposed before the inquiry committee that was set up to investigate the circumstances behind Deshpande’s suicide. The encounter was almost surreal. Instead of treating us as whistleblowers who wanted the Tata group to look into the matter seriously and restore order, the line of questioning seemed completely hostile at times — and intimidatory. Almost as if I had committed a crime by reporting the matter to the group. Of course, I’ve never allowed myself to be intimidated all these years — and I wasn’t about to flinch. But it was a wasted opportunity to find out more about the mess within.

In the end, despite all the enormous stress that she went through, Pandit makes an incredible offer to the new Tata management: To meet her and discuss how to ensure that her experience serves as a way to improve their processes. Now, are the Tatas willing to sit across the table, listen and learn? If they do accept, that would be an incredible leadership call and make it possibly be the only silver lining in this sordid saga.

The writer is co-founder of Founding Fuel