It may look like a typo but the word 'malendar' on the website of the NGO Vaastav Foundation is not only an intentional pun but a rather desperate one. In this online calendar, the Mumbai-based NGO -which has been fighting for men's rights for over a decade-lists the gamut of days it deems important for men. Besides events such as International Husband's Day and even Abolition of Slavery Day, it includes International Men's Day, which lapsed recently on November 19. It's an event the non-profit has been trying to get calendar manufacturers to acknowledge for years in vain. This year, however, not only did Men's Day get a hat-tip from local calendars in Mumbai but also from the heritage building of CST station which lit up in blue on Tuesday on the NGO's behest.

"We are finding acceptance now," says Amit Deshpande, president of the decade-old Vaastav Foundation whose members would once face open ridicule for calling themselves victims. Today, not only do fewer people laugh in Deshpande's face but corporates invite him for seminars in which he draws attention to things like the incidence of prostate cancer. In TedX talks, Deshpande has highlighted the need to focus on the number of boy dropouts in schools in India ("which is higher than the number of girl dropouts) or male suicides ("which is twice that of women in India").

Just earlier this week, in fact, a predominantly male audience listened keenly when he held a press meet highlighting the impact of false

accusations on men. Here, actor Karan Oberoi-who became the face of the #MenToo movement when a woman who accused him of rape was arrested for filing a fake case-spoke about need for awareness on "lopsided laws" while Manish Gupta, writer of 'Section 375', a movie about a woman who files a fake rape case as revenge, said, "at least 70-80%" of the 160 court cases he sat through for research turned out to be false cases.

At the height of the #MeToo movement, though, speaking out on these issues wasn't easy for men's rights activists. "People would point out that the number of male victims is small," says Deshpande. "But even if it is one man facing a false case, no innocents should be held guilty," he says. His NGO typically encounters men slapped with the anti-dowry act, Section 498 (A), but there is also a rise in the number of men charged with rape and sexual harassment at the workplace seeking help. Deshpande, who has "routinely" encountered men who lost their jobs due to false accusations, also cites cases in which men have ended their lives in the aftermath of false rape accusations. "All we are saying is law should be gender-neutral," says Deshpande. "There should be fear of penalty when you make a rape allegation. Right now, lives are being destroyed anonymously."

Today, apart from over 40 NGOs fighting for men's rights across the country, the movement also enjoys the vocal support of women including celebrities such as actor Pooja Bedi. In fact, Vaastav even boasts its own women's wing comprising family members and friends of men who have been falsely accused. Few years ago, it was one such personal brush with a false accusation that turned Gurugram-based independent journalist Deepika Narayan Bhardwaj into a men's right activist. Bhardwaj regularly highlights false cases against men on her Twitter account and gets close to 20 queries a day in her inbox. "It's not about how many men suffer or how many women suffer," says Bhardwaj. "It's about creating awareness about a wrong happening in society..."

Predictably, as a woman, this men's rights activist faces criticism from trolls who think she is "anti-women". "I am pro-humanity," she'd like to tell them.