Laws against sexual harassment? Fine. What about laws to mandate healthy sexual interaction in the workplace? And clean toilets too

Human Resource managers are trained to groom robots for work, which do not endanger the company in any way and increase profitability – its time they evolve from being the ideal HR police cum moral police to someone who actually gives a suck for the employee lost in the workflow maze

Laws ensuring “healthy sex in the workplace” are just focused on preventing sexual harassment, covering the company’s legal backside and managing potential conflicts of interest arising from consensual romantic relationships to ensure a safe and professional environment for all employees – male and female. This is all very fine but in this day and age when Human Resources conducts PowerPoint presentations to train hires from Tier 3 towns on how to use the western toilet and how to enjoy life in the company campus with swimming pools, cafes, badminton courts, tennis courts and indoor games, shouldn’t there be training for healthy and pleasurable sex? There are no laws that explicitly regulate “healthy sex” itself, as this falls under personal life, but laws and policies govern conduct in the workplace.

Sex is as much as part of modern life and modern interaction between the sexes as is use of western toilets. Overt and covert sexual interaction is as much a part of modern life as is professional interaction between equals and boss-subordinate interactions. Sex is no longer limited to bearing children and the identity of joint family procreation of caste and gotr. The sale of condoms now go up with the advent of festivals and good times. It is no longer restricted to family duty in the master bedroom and family chatter in the master living room. Then why do process-driven companies in India do not introduce sex in the human resource orientation agenda? It is time they do.

Taking a tangent here. Indian companies still do not have a single law which punishes management for not providing clean and effective sanitation to employees. I know for a fact that many companies do not provide toilets at all and ask employees to use the nearest public toilets. This cannot be tolerated in a nation, which prides itself on being third largest economy in the world. This would be like the Soviet Union being a superpower in the military arena but lacking food and shelter for its people.

HR as the moral police is on the lines of Indians practicing law as per British style spare the rod and spoil the employee kind of scenario. It is time we graduated from this to a more modern outlook a la McGregor’s Theory X vs Theory Y. It is time we grew out of the imperialistic slave mindset and developed a more globally progressive outlook.

Healthy Sex and Clean Toilets: The Twin Taboos of Indian Life – Corporate or Otherwise

“Laws against sexual harassment? Fine. But what about laws to mandate healthy sexual interaction in the workplace? And of course, to mandate clean toilets too.”

That provocative question strikes at the heart of India’s corporate hypocrisy — a nation that celebrates its trillion-dollar GDP dreams yet struggles with something as basic as clean toilets and emotional maturity. It’s 2025, and Human Resources departments across India are still teaching new hires from Tier-3 towns how to use a western toilet but refuse to teach them how to engage respectfully, ethically, and even joyfully in modern human relationships.

I. From Fear to Fluency: What Laws Actually Say

India’s Prevention of Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (POSH) Act, 2013 and the corresponding sections of the Bharatiya Nyay Samhita (BNS), 2023 provide detailed protection against harassment, intimidation, and exploitation.

Under BNS Section 75 and 76, the law criminalizes acts that insult or outrage a woman’s modesty or constitute sexual harassment — replacing earlier provisions like IPC Section 354A and 509. These provisions now cover a wider range of gender-based offenses, and the Bharatiya Nagrik Suraksha Samhita (BNSS), 2023 ensures procedural protection such as anonymity for victims and in-camera trials.

However, what remains absent — in both law and policy — is any concept of healthy sexual interaction, relationship education, or mutual consent training in professional settings. The legal structure operates on negatives: what not to do, how not to offend, how to avoid harassment complaints. There is no discussion of positives: how to respect, communicate, express affection, or navigate intimacy among consenting adults at work.

This legal silence is paradoxical in a country where sex is everywhere — in advertising, music, digital life — but never in policy or education.

II. HR’s Toilet Training Hypocrisy

When new employees join multinational companies in Bengaluru or Gurugram, HR orientation often includes a “campus life” session: slides about swimming pools, gyms, tennis courts, cafes, and yes — western toilets.

Corporate India has evolved to teach urban manners and lifestyle skills, yet it refuses to address emotional and sexual intelligence. Training programs cover “email etiquette” but never “relationship boundaries.” Workshops exist for “cyber safety” but none for “consent and emotional health.”

As behavioral economist Dan Ariely wrote in Predictably Irrational (2008), “Human behavior is not governed by logic but by norms.” When corporate systems define no norms for human relationships, employees turn to gossip, secrecy, and exploitation.

In Japan, some corporations conduct “social harmony” sessions (wa no kunren), which teach emotional balance, interpersonal respect, and sexuality in the context of teamwork. Scandinavian nations integrate sexual literacy and consent awareness in both schools and workplaces. The Swedish Consent Law of 2018 even made explicit verbal consent a requirement in sexual relations, changing national culture toward respect.

By contrast, Indian HR departments act as moral police — reactive, punitive, and embarrassed by natural human interaction.

III. The Corporate Caste System of Silence

Indian workplaces are still culturally divided. Senior managers — often schooled in colonial-era professional ethics — maintain a façade of morality. Junior staff, especially from smaller towns, navigate new gender dynamics without guidance.

This creates fertile ground for misunderstanding and conflict. Consider the Infosys Mysuru Campus incident (2021), where young trainees were disciplined for alleged “indecent acts” in dorms. Instead of counseling or education, management responded with punishment and shame.

Similarly, in a Tata Motors POSH case (2018), a senior employee was fired for sexual harassment — only for the High Court to later learn that the relationship had been consensual. The case highlighted how companies treat intimacy as a scandal rather than a human phenomenon needing structured policy.

Sociologist Anthony Giddens, in The Transformation of Intimacy (1992), described this shift from “arranged” to “negotiated” relationships as central to modern society. Workplaces, where men and women collaborate intensely, are natural spaces for such negotiation — yet corporate India behaves as if romance is immoral and harassment inevitable.

IV. Management by Fear vs Management by Maturity

The idea that HR must act as a moral police flows from India’s colonial and bureaucratic inheritance. It mirrors what Douglas McGregor described in his 1960 classic The Human Side of Enterprise as Theory X vs Theory Y:

• Theory X assumes employees are lazy, irresponsible, and must be controlled through rules and punishment.
• Theory Y believes employees are self-motivated, capable, and can be trusted with responsibility.

Most Indian companies still practice Theory X. Their HR policies focus on compliance, not culture; on punishment, not prevention. Sexuality, relationships, and mental health are treated as threats, not aspects of life to be managed through maturity and education.

In contrast, organizations inspired by Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (1943) or Herzberg’s Motivation-Hygiene Theory (1959) understand that employees’ psychological and biological well-being directly affect productivity. Sex and sanitation — both essential to dignity — sit at the bottom of Maslow’s pyramid, under physiological and safety needs.

An employee who fears humiliation or lacks a clean toilet cannot aspire to higher productivity or creativity.

V. The Other Shame: Toilets in the Third-Largest Economy

If the silence around sex is cultural, the neglect of toilets is criminal.

Despite being the world’s fifth-largest economy, India still witnesses cases where workers, especially women, are forced to use public toilets or even open spaces during work hours.

The Factories Act, 1948, Building and Other Construction Workers Act, 1996, and Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970 all mandate employers to provide adequate sanitation. Yet enforcement remains weak.

In ITC Ltd. v. Presiding Officer, Calcutta High Court (2019), lack of women’s toilets was ruled a violation of dignity and gender equality. Similarly, the Supreme Court in Municipal Council, Ratlam v. Vardhichand (1980) declared sanitation a basic human right, compelling a municipality to construct public toilets.

The Bharatiya Nyay Samhita (BNS), 2023, under Section 358, criminalizes acts endangering public health due to negligence. By interpretation, a company failing to provide toilets could fall under this section. Yet no precedent exists — because employees rarely sue for toilets. Fear of job loss often outweighs the discomfort of indignity.

A woman in Noida, for example, won ₹2 lakh compensation from the State Consumer Forum in 2022 after urinary infections caused by her company’s lack of facilities. That remains a rare, courageous case.

VI. The Global Benchmark: Workplaces that Talk About Love and Health

In the United States, “love contracts” are increasingly common in large firms like Google and Meta. These are mutual consent agreements signed by couples in the same organization, ensuring transparency and avoiding conflicts of interest.

In France, the Labour Code (Article L4121-1) mandates employers to ensure “physical and mental health” at the workplace — interpreted by courts to include emotional well-being. In the UK, the Equality Act, 2010 indirectly encourages sexual health awareness to prevent gender-based discrimination.

Nordic countries, with open dialogue about sexuality, have fewer workplace harassment cases. Education and awareness replace shame and fear.

India could easily adapt such models. HR policies could include modules titled “Relationship Boundaries,” “Consent and Communication,” or “Emotional Wellness at Work.” Psychologists could counsel teams post-breakup or conflict. Love, if managed transparently, need not be scandalous — it can be stabilizing.

VII. HR as Human Resource — Not Humiliation Resource

A Bengaluru fintech startup recently experimented with an “Emotional Wellness Orientation.” The session included discussions on consent, boundaries, and even dealing with rejection. Within six months, the HR department recorded a 30% drop in interpersonal conflicts and complaints.

In contrast, a Gurugram BPO fired a young man under POSH provisions after a consensual relationship soured. His ex-partner did not allege harassment, but gossip spread. HR’s knee-jerk action destroyed his career. There was no counseling, no mediation — just moral panic.

This is what Peter Drucker, the father of modern management, warned against in The Practice of Management (1954): when organizations forget they manage humans, not machines. Drucker insisted that “the most valuable asset of any organization is its human capital.” Denying employees emotional and physical dignity is not just unethical — it’s unproductive.

VIII. The Psychology of Denial

Why do Indian organizations find it easier to build cafeterias than clean toilets? Why do they fear open talk about relationships more than rising attrition?

Psychologist Sigmund Freud, in his Civilization and Its Discontents (1930), argued that repression of natural instincts leads to neurosis — both individual and collective. Indian corporate culture, still under colonial shadows, prizes control and hierarchy over trust and openness.

The result is a cycle of silence — unspoken harassment, secret relationships, and unsanitary offices. A workplace that cannot discuss bodies honestly ends up degrading them quietly.

IX. The Law’s New Frontier: Dignity Beyond Decency

The Supreme Court of India, in K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India (2017), recognized privacy and bodily autonomy as fundamental rights under Article 21. This includes the right to make intimate choices free of coercion.

If privacy and dignity are constitutional rights, then workplaces — which occupy most of an adult’s waking hours — must protect them. Denial of clean sanitation or emotional safety violates the same constitutional ethos that criminalizes harassment.

The Bharatiya Nyay Samhita 2023 could have gone further — by explicitly penalizing employers for denying sanitation and by promoting emotional safety standards under workplace welfare. Just as BNSS Section 173 mandates detailed victim protection in sexual crimes, parallel provisions could require companies to ensure hygienic and emotionally safe environments.

X. Happy Situations, Sad Situations

Happy:
A Pune IT firm introduces “relationship disclosure” policies modeled on Silicon Valley’s. Couples can confidentially inform HR about consensual relationships to prevent future conflicts. Far from scandalizing, it humanized the workplace. Productivity rose.

Sad:
A garment factory in Tiruppur forced female workers to walk 400 meters to a public toilet. Complaints were ignored until an NGO filed a PIL. The High Court reprimanded the management, but the women lost months of income.

Happy:
An international airline introduced mandatory menstrual and sexual health counseling for cabin crew. Absenteeism fell, and satisfaction ratings soared.

Sad:
A call-center employee in Hyderabad fainted due to dehydration; the office toilets had no running water. Management suspended her for “indiscipline.”

Each case reflects a truth: emotional and physical dignity are inseparable. Ignoring one corrupts the other.

XI. The Management Revolution We Need

The next stage of India’s corporate and legal evolution must move from punishment to participation, from fear to fluency.

This requires reforms on three levels:

1. Legal Reforms:
   • Amend the Bharatiya Nyay Samhita to include corporate liability for lack of sanitation under occupational safety.
   • Incorporate mandatory “Workplace Dignity Training” in HR compliance audits.
   • Recognize emotional and psychological safety as part of “health” under labour law.
2. Organizational Reforms:
   • Integrate modules on consent, respect, and emotional wellness into induction training.
   • Establish confidential relationship disclosure systems.
   • Regularly audit sanitation and hygiene facilities, not just financial accounts.
3. Cultural Reforms:
   • Normalize conversations on sex, menstruation, and relationships.
   • Stop treating HR as the morality police.
   • Teach managers Theory Y — that employees are adults who thrive on trust, not control.

XII. From Colonial Control to Human Connection

Colonial bureaucracy left behind not just laws but a mindset: control the subject, fear the body, suppress pleasure. In India’s glass towers, that mindset still lingers.

The new Bharatiya Nyay Samhita sought to “decolonize” justice. Now, corporations must decolonize their Human Resource Management.

As Peter Drucker wrote, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” Without a culture of dignity — both physical (clean toilets) and emotional (healthy sexuality) — no strategy can make India’s workforce truly world-class.

XIII. The New Professionalism

In the 21st century, professionalism is not about stiff collars or gender segregation. It is about mutual respect, bodily autonomy, and clean environments.

A nation that can send spacecraft to the Moon can certainly build toilets for all employees — and teach them to navigate human intimacy with grace.

India doesn’t need prudish silence; it needs humane systems. Because whether it’s love or hygiene, what the workplace really needs is not more laws of fear — but more laws, and habits, of respect.