In this in depth conversation, Esha Shekhar, Founder and Principal Attorney at ES Law Offices, reflects on a 13 year journey that spans journalism, litigation, corporate advisory, gender law compliance, and public interest litigation. From building a niche practice in POSH law to advising government bodies, leading internal investigations, and supporting organizations as a Fractional General Counsel, she shares how law, policy, and impact can intersect in meaningful ways. Through her work across sectors, including POSH compliance and workplace investigations, she discusses shaping workplace culture and using technology to enhance compliance frameworks.
This interview has been published by Anshi Mudgal and The SuperLawyer Team
Last time you spoke with the SuperLawyer team, you were transitioning from journalism to litigation. How have your diverse roles over the past 13 years, from lawyer to entrepreneur, shaped your understanding of the profession and the work you do for clients and society?
Thank you for inviting me for this interview. It’s wonderful to reconnect because, as you said, the last time I spoke with SuperLawyer was when I had just moved from journalism into litigation – that feels like a lifetime ago now.
The journey from there to building my own firm has really been about aligning my personal and professional goals. I spent a few years in litigation, which gave me a solid foundation, but I soon realized litigation was not my end goal. I have always been drawn to work that sits at the intersection of law, policy, and business, and I wanted to build a career that allowed me to combine and work on multiple elements.
Over the years, that intention has shaped how I have structured my work – whether it’s advising on corporate and technology contracts, leading POSH and Code of Conduct investigations, working as Fractional General Counsel, or collaborating with the government sector on gender laws compliance. Each of these roles allows me to bring together different aspects of the law in a way that is both meaningful and impactful.
What drives your deep passion for POSH laws and how have you built this unique specialization across your work with the government, private sector, and through your book?
So, the POSH Act, as we all know, came into force in 2013. At that time, I was litigating and also advising corporate clients, and I started receiving compliance-related queries under this new law. I had always been interested in gender laws since college, but I never imagined I would specialize in them professionally- it just happened organically.
As I delved deeper, I noticed a familiar problem we often see with Indian compliance laws: good intent, weak implementation. It’s a blend of not just compliance law. It combines a social obligation and it also has a workplace safety impact, which influences and which has a larger bearing on the behaviour of everybody who’s working at the workplace to create a safe workplace.
While I started delving deeper into the law, client queries and started identifying the gaps, I realized that training and awareness were the missing pieces. Many companies had POSH policies on paper but no functioning ICCs, no trained members, and no employee sensitization. So, I began conducting sessions myself- learning how to engage audiences, make the law relatable, and connect it to real workplace behaviour. That process became the foundation of my expertise.
Over time, I expanded into policy drafting and internal investigations, and I have always anchored my work in research, from the Vishaka Guidelines to evolving case law. I tell young lawyers the same thing: your research is your foundation. That continuous learning has been my biggest motivator in building this specialization.
How do you address and create a roadmap to solve the common challenges that arise during gender sensitization training and in tackling workplace gender-based discrimination?
I will address this question in two parts – the challenges and the shifts I’ve seen over time.
When I started working on the POSH Act around 2016, most organizations approached it as a mere compliance requirement. Many wanted to know the “minimum” they had to do to tick the legal box. The real challenge was, and still is, helping leadership understand that this law is not just about compliance; it is about building a safe and respectful culture.
The tone has to come from the top. When leadership actively supports training, empowers ICCs, and encourages managers to take responsibility, the entire organization responds differently. Managers are often the first people employees turn to before approaching an ICC. So they need to be trained on how to address these cases when it comes to them since they are the first line of defence. So to make sure that these trainings are conducted and this messaging is sent across to everyone in the organization, that is the biggest challenge.
That said, I have also witnessed a positive evolution. The law itself has matured over the last decade, and awareness has grown. With the #MeToo movement in 2018, there was a significant shift- it shifted the conversation from compliance to accountability. Another factor was the Companies Act amendment, which made directors sign off on POSH compliance in their annual reports. It pushed boards to ask: What exactly are we signing off on?
The pandemic brought its own complexities – defining workplace boundaries in remote setups, for example. And as investigations increase, ICCs now need stronger training on procedure, inquiry standards, and report writing.
So yes, challenges persist, but there is a clear momentum. I have been fortunate to work with organizations and leaders that genuinely see value in compliance beyond ticking a box – they understand that it’s integral to a healthy workplace culture.
How do you adapt your training strategies across private, government, and institutional settings to ensure each sector understands and applies the same law effectively?
That’s a great question actually. Since I began working on POSH, I have realized that every audience and sector requires a completely different approach. You can’t communicate the same message in the same way to everyone – it simply doesn’t land.
Two things really shape my strategy: language and context. For example, when I conduct sessions in workplaces with blue-collar employees, I cannot rely on English alone. The conversation has to be in a language and tone that’s accessible and relatable. Similarly, in a government setup, the audience is often older, more hierarchical, and rooted in traditional systems- so the communication has to be more direct and example-based.
On the other hand, for private-sector companies, especially those in tech or creative industries, the discussions are more nuanced. We talk about workplace boundaries, dating within teams, and the fine line between informal and inappropriate behaviour. The focus there is on helping them navigate modern work dynamics.
The same principle applies to ICC training. For newly formed committees, the focus is on the basics – how to receive a complaint, maintain empathy, and follow due process. With experienced ICCs, we go deeper into investigation procedures, evidence gathering, report writing, and conducting inquiries fairly.
So, the key is contextualization – every training has to be tailored to the sector, audience, and maturity level of the organization. That’s when I know a session has truly worked – when it connects and stays with the participants.
What motivated you to file a PIL in 2017 for POSH Act compliance and what changes have you observed in the eight years since taking that step?
So the motivation behind filing the PIL was quite straightforward. By 2017, after several years of working in this space, I realized that while organizations were expected to comply with the POSH Act, the state machinery itself wasn’t fully functional. Local Complaints Committees (LCCs), which are crucial for women in the unorganized sector, were partially set up or not set up at all.. Then I started finding out the details of district officers appointed under the Act, since every organization has to file an annual report at the end of the calendar year to the district officer. However, even those details were not available.
That led us to investigate further. My team and I spent nearly a year filing RTIs across all states and union territories, gathering data on compliance and the existence of LCCs. The results were alarming – patchy information, missing structures, and no public access to details that were meant to exist by law. We compiled our findings, made representations to various state departments, and eventually filed a PIL in 2018 through Initiatives for Inclusion Foundation. A set of directions were passed in the matter in 2023 and then the case was tagged with Aureliano Fernandez vs State of Goa. Now the Supreme Court, under Justice Nagarathna, is actively monitoring implementation.
The impact has been visible, especially in the last year. Most states have now appointed District Officers and are being directed to publicly disclose details of LCCs. One of our key prayers was accessibility – and we are finally seeing progress there.
The SHe-Box portal, which allows women to file complaints online, is another major development arising from this push. It’s still being set up, but it’s a very welcome move in the aspect of ensuring accessibility, ensuring information, and ensuring that people know that this is where they need to go.
It’s been a long journey, but the outcome reflects why we filed the PIL in the first place – to ensure that the law’s structures actually exist, not just on paper.
How do you think the Supreme Court’s monitoring in the Aureliano Fernandez case will impact POSH compliance, sensitization, and the way institutions receive and handle complaints?
The Supreme Court’s ongoing monitoring of POSH Act compliance is creating a strong, visible ripple effect across states and institutions. The impact is both structural and cultural. Structurally, states are now being held accountable for implementing the law. Once District Officers are notified, they become responsible for collecting annual POSH reports from organizations in their jurisdiction. This process forces visibility – district officers must know how many complaints were received, addressed, or pending. If we see across the country, slowly more and more district officers are now getting sensitized about their role.
In the past year, I’ve seen several district officers at bigger cities in India issue show-cause notices, publish newspaper advisories, and push organizations to set up Internal Committees (ICCs). This accountability chain- from the Supreme Court to state departments to private entities- is ensuring that compliance no longer remains theoretical.
For organizations, the cascading effect is in terms of proactive questions being raised within the internal teams, HR or legal teams, “Are we compliant? Do we have an ICC? Have we trained our members?” There’s also a growing emphasis on visibility, putting up notices, sharing ICC details, and registering on platforms like SHe-Box, which is now being expanded to include private organizations.
In the She-Box now there is a requirement for private organizations to register themselves, and slowly, slowly, at least in the next one year, this is going to become more and more common. More and more states are going to take out notifications for organizations to register. In that way, slowly but steadily, there’s going to be a lot more information. And secondly, more people who are onboarded on at least one platform have this collective understanding that this is what we need to do. We need to set up ICC, we need to do our sessions, we need to make sure that we have notices in the organization.
The ripple is reaching the public sector too. Ministries, PSUs, and state departments are being pushed by their Women and Child Development departments to conduct training and operationalize their ICCs.
So, while these changes may seem procedural, their collective effect is powerful – creating awareness, standardizing practice, and moving the needle on the law existing on paper to its implementation.
How do emerging technologies support or hinder POSH implementation, especially in ensuring transparency, accessibility, accountability, and overall value addition to ICC functioning across institutions?
When it comes to technology, we are still in the early stages of seeing its full potential in POSH compliance, but the shift has definitely begun. Larger organizations, especially those with a wide employee base, are now using tech to standardize complaint mechanisms. Some have built internal digital portals where complaints can be logged, ICCs are automatically notified, and progress is tracked on dashboards. These systems create structure and transparency, which smaller, manual processes often lack.
Another important space where technology is helping is education and sensitization. Many organizations have moved their POSH and Code of Conduct trainings online, developing digital learning modules for employees and ICC members. This not only ensures regular refreshers but also helps maintain consistent records of compliance.
I see this as a welcome trend because workplace safety begins with awareness and prevention. The more accessible we make information and learning, the more employees internalize appropriate workplace conduct. Over time, that builds a self-sustaining culture of safety and respect. So yes, technology is slowly embedding itself into the compliance ecosystem, not as a replacement for empathy or leadership accountability, but as a tool that makes these systems more transparent, consistent, and scalable.
What motivates you as an independent lawyer and entrepreneur, what led you to choose independent practice, and what guidance would you offer first-generation law students entering this field?
So, I would say that when I went independent, it was not just one factor that contributed to it but multiple things that kept shaping up my career. My time in journalism and litigation taught me a lot, but more importantly, it helped me figure out what I did not want. One thing that I always feel, if you can’t figure out what you want to do, you can also figure out what you don’t want to do as well. Sometimes people focus on the positive rather than looking at the fact that you also know certain things that would just not work for you in your career.
And one thing that I understood about myself was that I don’t want to be in one silo throughout my journey. I am somebody who wants to combine separate things that I’m working on and see how I can sort of combine them together or weave them together into my professional journey. I’ve always wanted to work at the intersection of law, policy, and impact – to bring multiple disciplines together. Over time, I also realized that I enjoy being cross-functional: working as a lawyer, trainer, consultant, and investigator. Independence allowed me that flexibility – to experiment, build, and work across sectors without structural limitations.
And of course, it really did help that the support that I got from my family and the support I got from my spouse was very instrumental in terms of making sure that I did not, even on days or even on situations when I used to think that it’s getting like a lot and, you know, the hustle is too much. Should I quit? But at least the counsel that I received from all of my family in general has been very instrumental in me keeping to my journey.
As for advice to young or first-generation lawyers – two things: First, focus on subject-matter depth and develop subject matter expertise You can start as a generalist and be a jack of all trades but at some point, you must identify what truly interests you and develop expertise in it. Your advice to clients will reflect that, your advice can reflect the maturity and research that goes when you have that expertise. And that goes a long way. And, to each their own. Somebody can like corporate law, do that. If you like litigating and you like litigating in a certain area, please do that. But do figure out subject matter depth and expertise.
And the second thing that I always say is that don’t chase after titles. Chase after what you want. Money is going to flow for you. Generally, people are going to know you if whatever you want, if you want more people to know you, if you want money, whatever it is. You want work-life balance. It’s better to focus on your objectives in life rather than focusing on title. Because once you start chasing after titles, you realize after a point that there is a limitation to it. And there is going to be an end point after which you have to think about your objectives in life. So sort of start building an understanding about weaving it together, and it’s going to help you build a more sustainable career.
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