What happens when an institution proudly announces that it has an Internal Complaints Committee—yet justice never quite makes it past the door? In recent years, ICC has become a familiar acronym in Kerala, especially amid public reckonings in the cultural and creative industries. But familiarity has bred complacency. The presence of a committee is increasingly mistaken for proof of safety, and compliance is routinely confused with accountability. This blog asks an uncomfortable but necessary question: when does the ICC function as a mechanism of justice, and when does it merely perform legality? By focusing on the most neglected yet decisive element of the POSH framework—the external member—this reflection exposes how institutions convert a transformative law into a ritual of silence, and why justice collapses the moment independence is compromised.
The phrase Internal Complaints Committee (ICC) entered Kerala’s public vocabulary with unusual force in the aftermath of a series of ruptures within the Malayalam film industry: the sexual assault of an actress in February 2017, the formation of the Women in Cinema Collective (WCC) in November 2017, and the submission of the Hema Committee Report in 2019, later publicly released—tellingly, in redacted form—in August 2024.
Public discussions in the Malayalam media largely revolved around the assault, the activism of the WCC, and the political implications of the Hema Committee’s findings. What remained under-discussed, however, was the most banal yet decisive legal mechanism meant to address sexual harassment across everyday workplaces: the ICC mandated under the POSH Act, 2013 [The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013].
Every organisation with more than ten employees is legally required to constitute an ICC. In a society that continues to reproduce patriarchal and misogynist structures well into 2025, this statutory requirement is, in principle, significant. But principle alone does not produce justice. An ICC can exist perfectly on paper while failing entirely in practice.
And the clearest indicator of this failure is almost always the same: the absence, dilution, or symbolic inclusion of the external member.
Compliance Is Easy. Justice Is Not.
Let us ask the uncomfortable questions we usually avoid. How many of us have actually read the Sexual Harassment at Workplace Act, 2013? How many employees—women in particular—know how to file a complaint, what constitutes evidence, or what procedural safeguards exist? And let me extend the question: how many men are aware of due process protections when complaints are weaponised or mishandled?
Yes, these questions operate within a gender binary. That is not accidental; it is symptomatic of the law itself, which remains embedded in a binary legal imagination. This limitation deserves serious critique—but first, we must confront how even this imperfect law is routinely hollowed out by institutions.
The ICC: A Structure Designed to Be Undermined?
The law anticipated institutional resistance. That is why Chapter VI of the Act, “Duties of the Employer,” makes legal literacy non-negotiable. Employers are required to conduct regular sensitisation programmes for employees and orientation programmes for ICC members.
And yet, in reality, ICCs are often staffed by members who have never read the Act in full.
This brings us to a critical fault line: procedural ignorance is not neutral. It always benefits power.
Confidentiality clauses are ignored, meetings are treated casually, non-members are allowed to “sit in,” and survivors are re-exposed to scrutiny and gossip. These are not minor lapses. They are violations that transform a legal safeguard into a site of secondary harm.
But none of this compares to the damage done when the external member is missing—or worse, misinterpreted.
The External Member: The Law’s Only Real Check on Power
Is the external member mandatory? The answer is unequivocal: yes.
And yet, this is the provision most frequently bypassed, diluted, or cynically reinterpreted. Institutions routinely argue that a legally trained employee or a “gender-sensitive” senior staff member can substitute for an external expert. This is not merely incorrect—it is a wilful distortion of the law.
The Act clearly mandates that one ICC member must be drawn from a non-governmental organisation or association committed to women’s causes, or be a person familiar with issues of sexual harassment. Crucially, this person must be external to the organisation and must be paid for their role.
Why does this matter so much?
Because organisations are not abstract entities. They are dense networks of hierarchy, loyalty, fear, and dependency. Expecting justice to emerge from a committee composed entirely of insiders is to assume that power will voluntarily indict itself.
The external member is not a token presence. They are the only structural interruption in an otherwise closed system. They are meant to introduce distance, dissent, and accountability into a process otherwise vulnerable to institutional capture.
Remove the external member, and the ICC collapses into an internal negotiation of reputation management.
When Even the External Member Is Not Enough
My own experience as an external member of an ICC in an institution in Kerala revealed just how fragile this safeguard is. Even without institutional allegiance, drafting a report grounded in justice was a deeply contested exercise. Resistance was subtle but relentless—delays, silences, procedural evasions.
And when the report was finally submitted? It changed nothing.
Why? Because ICC recommendations are only recommendatory. Institutions retain the power to stall, reinterpret, or quietly bury findings that threaten their image. The law creates a committee but stops short of guaranteeing enforcement.
Even the mandated sitting fee for the external member—clearly stated in the Act—was never paid in my case. Not because of ignorance, but because dissent carries costs. The external member is expected to be independent, but not inconvenient.
The Dangerous Myth of Gendered Moral Authority
Another troubling assumption embedded in the law is that women are inherently better suited to chair ICCs. Experience tells us otherwise. All women are not feminists. All men are not patriarchal. Ethical clarity does not flow automatically from gender.
An ICC chaired by women who prioritise institutional harmony over justice can be just as damaging as one chaired by openly patriarchal men. Feminist politics is not an identity—it is a practice.
The Hard Truth
The law may have given us a structure, but institutions decide whether it becomes a site of justice or a shield against accountability.
In my next blog, I will reflect more deeply on how gender, power, and positionality operate within ICCs—because the real battle is not only legal. It is institutional, cultural, and deeply political.
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