Answer to: Company not supporting in exit formalities

I am first going to answer this philosophically: If you have a Society that says "Well everyone else is doing it, so I may as well do it" - it ends badly. We can talk at length about Indian Labour Laws and cultural practices etc. We can debate the efficacy of them and whether or not they are just. But you, The Individual have a choice to make. Which is whether or not you want to stoop to that level or if you want to hold yourself accountable to a higher standard. I believe that Society, as a whole, is better when you do the latter. It might suck in the short-term - but lying and cheating to get out of a contract will come back to bite you - I shouldn't need to raise the notion of Karma to an Indian. Whereas if you do the right thing, eventually that will be recognized and rewarded. Right, now for the practical answer Firstly - I want to say that this piggy-backs off of Hilmar's excellent answer. But the one thing missing was why I decided to post. I was curious about these employment Bonds and did some reading and it seems that the Indian Courts have held that unless the Employer did something that had a monetary value (that they expected to recoup during an employment period) they are Not enforceable. This is why I asked in the comments about training or certificates. This type of 'Bond' is not uncommon elsewhere - in NZ, for example, if my Employer puts me on a particularly expensive training course, they can ask that I sign a contract, to agree to work for X number of years (typically 2) otherwise I may have to pay back a pro-rated amount for whatever the training course was. For example - a colleuge went to a Saltstack training course that was I think around $5K NZD - they signed a contract to work for the company for 2 years. They left after 1.5 years (ironically because the company wasn't implementing Saltstack) - and had to pay the company back ~$1,250 (a quarter of the fee). This is reasonable. And it seems the Indian Courts agree - absent any financial input specific to the employee, these employment Bonds are not enforceable. However - I would recommend discuss this with an Indian Employment Lawyer to get confirmation on the above.