-The Indian Express Can wages paid to NREGA workers from scheduled castes be counted as money spent on SCs’ welfare? The Rural Development Ministry believes it can, but Social Justice and Empowerment Minister Kumari Selja doesn’t buy the argument. She has shot off a letter to the Planning Commission, questioning the rationale of including Rs 10,000 crore of NREGA funds in the SC sub-plan, under which a mandated 16.2% — the percentage...

-Denver Post BANWASA, India — The teenage girl was overpowered by four men at a railway crossing near this village and bundled into a car. For five days she was kept, imprisoned and naked, in a windowless outhouse on nearby farmland and raped repeatedly. Despite its brutality, the September incident merited just a few lines in a domestic news-agency story about a string of such crimes in the northern state of Haryana....

-Open Democracy Were Ram Singh and his cohort simply claiming a notion of masculinity promoted every day by their role models in politics, business and the media? Ruchira Gupta writes of the steady creeping of a rape culture into the fabric of India, and what needs to be done to counter the idea that women are commodities Let us talk about Ram Singh, the chief rapist accused in the case of Damini,...

-The Times of India SHIMLA: The exemplary courage shown by the Delhi gang rape victim has motivated a 15-year-old dalit girl from the remote village of Sirmaur district to stand up against the landlord who had been sexually exploiting her for last around five months. Lodging her complaint, the victim told the cops that bravery of the Delhi girl had prompted her to speak up. Police have arrested the accused. Sources said...

-The Hindu Business Line Indian society is yet to acknowledge the existence of rape culture – a set of beliefs that condones aggression on women. Perhaps no other event in India has received more international attention in the recent past than the brutal gang rape in Delhi and its tragic aftermath. The issue is widely covered in the Western media; the latest addition is the channel interview of the rape victim’s male...