-The Times of India Faced with all-around political opposition, the cabinet on Monday retained 18 as age of consent for consensual sex, graded punishment for stalking and voyeurism and deleted "persistent watching" as an offence while clearing a new law to protect women. The changes were agreed to after a meeting on Monday where political leaders raised concerns ranging from genuine apprehensions to frivolous over the possibility of "misuse" of tough laws...

-The Telegraph Differences over proposed changes to the law dealing with rape prompted the government to refer an amendment bill to a group of ministers today but the deadlock could not be resolved after the first round of discussions. The empowered group of ministers, headed by P. Chidambaram, is scheduled to meet again tomorrow and place its views before the cabinet on Thursday. The government is then expected to call an all-party...

-The Hindu Caste might be cast in stone judging from the way the dominant discourse gets conducted in India “Caste is the most overwhelming factor in Indian life. Those who deny it in principle also accept it in practice. Life moves within the frontiers of caste and cultured men speak in soft tones against the system of caste, while its rejection in action just does not occur to them...” Socialist thinker Ram...

-The Hindu Bhubaneshwar: Even as land acquisition for the proposed steel project of Posco remained suspended at Gobindpur village in Jagatsinghpur district of Odisha on Thursday, villagers staged a demonstration demanding complete withdrawal of the police from the locality. Leading the protest, Communist Party of India leader D. Raja condemned the entry of police into Gobindpur during night on Sunday when land acquisition was resumed after a gap of more than a...

-The Hindu The Suryanelli case in Kerala cast its lengthening shadow over the Congress on Thursday, with the rape victim’s mother asking party president Sonia Gandhi to act against Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman P. J. Kurien, whom she places at the heart of the 40-day-long nightmare her daughter underwent 17 years ago — a crime for which not one of the 42 accused persons has been punished to date. The woman...