Stories written by Ranjit Devraj
Regional editor Ranjit Devraj, based in Delhi, takes care of the journalistic production from the Asia and Pacific region. He handles a group of influential writers based in places like Bangkok, Rangoon, Tehran, Dubai, Karachi, Colombo, Melbourne, Beijing and Tokyo, among many others. He coordinates with the editor in chief and forms part of the IPS editorial team.
Ranjit Devraj has been an IPS correspondent in India since 1997. Prior to that he was a special correspondent with the United News of India news agency. Assignments for UNI included development of the agency’s overseas operations, particularly in the Gulf region. Devraj counts two years in the trenches (1989-1990) covering the violent Gorkha autonomy movement in the Darjeeling Hills as most valuable in a career of varied journalistic experience.
Of the various cooperation programmes Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced in Addis Ababa on Tuesday, plans for an India-Africa Virtual University (IAVU) take pride of place.
With the search for a new chief of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) increasingly likely to stay within the European pale, a top Indian economist says that what matters is that the Fund changes its approach to countries in distress.
Provincial elections in four major Indian states have produced two female chief ministers, proving women capable of holding their own in the rough and tumble of politics in this deeply patriarchal country.
A waste-to-energy (WtE) project in the heart of the Indian capital run by a powerful industrial family is testing the enforceability of the country’s environmental and zoning laws.
Osama bin Laden’s killing by U.S. troops, in a safe house adjacent to a Pakistani military academy in Abbottabad, may vindicate India’s charges that its neighbour is a haven for jihadist groups, but it will do little to change that reality.
While the Fukushima tragedy has not deterred India from going ahead with building the world’s largest nuclear power facility at Jaitapur on the western coast, the government has announced a tighter safety regime for its ambitious nuclear power programme.
Will India, the world’s biggest manufacturer of the pesticide endosulfan, and also the biggest victim of the toxic pesticide, persist with opposing its ban globally?
The summit of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) countries showed up both the strengths and the limitations of the caucus of emerging economies, says former Indian foreign secretary Shyam Saran in an interview to IPS.
As BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) leaders prepare for Thursday’s summit in the resort town of Sanya in China’s southern Hainan province, experts here say there are limits to how ‘political’ the grouping can get.
Seeing the bespectacled old man fasting in protest against corruption in the bustling heart of the Indian capital, many are reminded of Mahatma Gandhi, the man who used ‘moral power’ to lead India to independence from British colonial rule in 1947
The Fukushima disaster has prompted calls to review legislation passed by the Indian parliament in August 2010 that capped compensation payable, in the event of a nuclear accident, at 320 million U.S. dollars.
As India prepares to seal a sweeping trade and investment deal with the European Union (EU) in April, civil society groups are campaigning to limit the agreement's repercussions within the local generic drug industry here upon which millions of people around the globe depend.
India cannot match China’s massive investments in Africa, but it is using its information technology capabilities and its affordable university courses to stay relevant on the continent.
Anti-nuclear campaigners in India see the earthquake that hit Japan last week, which threatens the meltdown of the Fukushima atomic power facility there, as a wakeup call for this country’s ambitious nuclear power programme.
India’s Supreme Court has questioned clearances to industries on the basis of environment impact assessments (EIAs) carried out by private consultants in the pay of project proponents.
India has found backing at this week's India-Brazil-South Africa (IBSA) ministers meeting for its stance that a no-fly zone over Libya must follow multilateral consultations.
With the powerful Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) relinquishing control of its fighting arm, the People's Liberation Army (PLA), the Indian government, faced with its own Maoist insurgency, can breathe more easily.
Activists hope that a popular agitation against the setting up of a factory to manufacture asbestos products in the eastern Bihar state will result in a nationwide ban on the large-scale import into this country of the deadly mineral fibre.
Is it more important to build links with African civil society groups or concentrate on existing networks in the South Asian region? That is the dilemma before Indian delegates heading for the World Social Forum in Dakar, Senegal, and some who have opted out.
After Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's refusal to divulge details of billions of dollars allegedly stashed away abroad by Indians, anti-corruption crusaders are banking their hopes on promised Wikileaks revelations.
Winter in the Indian capital is a season of mists, minus the mellow fruitfulness. The air becomes charged with toxic emissions and particles that cannot disperse due to a meteorological phenomenon called "atmospheric inversion".