Iillustrations from the book

Advocate Rahul Mhaskar, in the 23 years of his career, has handled only one case of sexual harassment at the work place. To him, the sparse numbers were indicative of how far from hunky dory things were. Because even in the presence of a strong law, and the numerous cases of sexual harassment he'd unofficially hear of, women are still not approaching the law to tackle this menace. This observation prompted him to work on his book, Act 14 of 2013, a slim illustrative volume of 50 pages that breaks down the Act for the layman. Mhaskar says, "All my life I've only encountered fat, formidable volumes of law books, something that the layman would never want to read. So, legislations that are made for men and women are not reaching the target audience, because they are not presented in a reader-friendly manner. Keeping this in mind, I have come up with this book. The size is such that it can easily slip into a working woman's bag. She can read it while on the train, so that she does not have to cull out time for it during a busy day. One cannot expect her to go through 500 pages of a book to understand the definition and laws regarding sexual harassment." It is not a complicated volume, he adds, but one which a person with a very basic knowledge of English would understand. Interestingly, the text is interspersed with illustrations, to make the subject seem less formidable. "So, even if someone who can't read English, can understand just by following the pictures," he adds.