Decrying social taboos, the Madras High Court has asked why should eyebrows be raised if a woman chooses to reside with her parents at their house even after marriage or if she claims to be dependant on their income despite living either with her in-laws or as a nuclear family with her husband.
Justice R.N. Manjula lamented that quite often, the financial contributions made by the parents to their married daughter go unnoticed, unaccounted for, and even unrecognised because the societal norms consider such contributions to be something below the dignity of the in-laws or the husband.
The observations were made while the judge disposed of a writ petition filed by a woman whose plea for compassionate employment was rejected by Canara Bank on the ground that she was married when her father, an attender, died in harness in 2017 and she was not wholly dependant on his income.
The judge recalled that employers were initially reluctant to provide compassionate appointment to married daughters, though no such restriction was imposed on married sons of deceased employees. It took a series of judicial pronouncements over the years for the married daughters to establish their right.
After crossing the first level of challenge, the married daughters were now being asked to prove that they were wholly dependant on their parents’ income in order to seek compassionate employment. “In our social setting, it becomes a Herculean task for married women to prove such dependancy,” Justice Manjula said.
“Even the married daughter herself might think that to reveal her parents’ financial contributions would affect the dignity or image of her husband or her in-laws. It is for this reason, a married daughter cannot be asked to produce records to show that she was fully or partially dependent on her father’s income,” the judge wrote.
Such culturally complicated issues demand an empathetic approach while compassionate employment applications from married daughters are considered and not a pedantic approach attached to routine office files and formalities. “An act of compassion includes the elements of both sympathy and empathy,” the judge said.
She went on to state: “Matters related to compassionate employment require an understanding by getting into the shoes of not only the applicant but also those of the deceased employee and think how the deceased would have wished to settle his dependents if he had been alive.”
Compassionate appointment was more like fulfilling an unwritten will of the deceased employee and therefore, in such matters, providing employment must be the rule and denying it could only be an exception, the judge said, directing the bank to reconsider the petitioner’s plea and employ her in a suitable position.
