The problem Shakti solves

Motivation:

More than 50% of working professionals face sexual harassment at workplace, whether it be inappropriate touching or physical advances at work, a survey done by WICCI Council of Ethics revealed. “And it doesn’t just happen once” they say. It is said that 70% of these cases go unreported for the fear of not being believed and/or loss of employment.

• The government of India passed the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Protection and Redressal Act) (POSH Act)in 2013.
• 10 years after the act, the SC flagged that most workplaces still do not have an Internal Complaints Committee mandated by it.
• the Posh Act also fails victims where the court tends to rely on evidence and the SC noted that failure to provide evidence in cases of sexual harassment does not imply absence of crime
• Harassment at workplace starts subtly, the victims are almost unsure when to report it and are left doubting themselves if what happened to them would account to sexual harassment or not.

Solution:

Shakti provides:

• provable track record of your experiences of harrassment to act as evidence
• seeking help or advice to deal with the situation at hand
• ensuring privacy without revealing identity at all

Using:

• Web Interface: where employees can maintain notes/records about the incident(s)
• Smart Contract: encrypted note hash and encrypted IPFS CID will be stored in smart contract transactions. We are leveraging Biconomy smart accounts, so users don't need to create any wallets or extensions
• Generative AI Model: which will provide continuous support based on the guidelines from the government and the company’s compliance policies & recognise the severity of the incident from the notes and the kind of help and protection the victim could seek

At the time of reporting they can choose to reveal this information and it can be produced as evidence to the complaints committee with the proof of timestamp.

Challenges I ran into

Connecting different particulars, Blockchain and AI was difficult. Ensuring encryption and privacy feature took some major time, solved them eventually