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.

POLITICS-INDIA: Criminalisation Deters Women Candidates

By Ranjit Devraj
While India's major political parties are pledged to increase the space for women in the electoral process, a major deterrent to female participation is the steady criminalisation of politics in this country.

RIGHTS-IRAN: Damaging Forced Confessions

By Ranjit Devraj
Iranian political refugees living in India say there is an all too familiar ring about the supposed confessions of arrested journalist Roxana Saberi, which they expect to see footage of on television soon.

ECONOMY-INDIA: Tax Haven Loot Turns Election Issue*

By Ranjit Devraj
General elections currently being contested in India have brought an unusual issue to the fore - the repatriation of more than a trillion dollars believed to have been stashed away in Swiss and other tax havens.
Representatives from South Africa, India and Brazil at a meeting to devise a social development strategy for IBSA. Credit: ICSSR/IPS

DEVELOPMENT: IBSA – Where Elite Minorities Form the 'Political Majority'

By Ranjit Devraj
Top social scientists from India, Brazil and South Africa (IBSA), meeting here to set the backdrop for the mid-October third summit of the new bloc, are sobered by the thought that large sections of their populations remain excluded from the economic growth their governments boast of.

INDIA: Futures Trade in Farm Commodities – Wrangle Continues

By Ranjit Devraj
The reluctance of a high-level committee set up by the Indian government to spell out whether futures trading in agricultural commodities has resulted in an escalation of food prices has revealed deep divisions over the issue.

INDIA: China Keeps Torch, Tibetans Get Media Mileage

By Ranjit Devraj
With the Olympic torch passing safely through India, home of the government-in-exile of the Dalai Lama, China got what it wanted. But then so did the large community of Tibetan expatriates in this country: publicity for their cause.

DEVELOPMENT: Food Shortages an Emergency – FAO Chief

By Ranjit Devraj
Jacques Diouf, director general of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), on Wednesday described spiralling food prices as an "emergency" that demanded concerted global attention.
M.F. Husain's painting 'Radheyshyam' - peace arising out of love between Radha and Krishna. Credit: Courtesy of the artist.

CULTURE-INDIA: Painting Peace

By Ranjit Devraj
"War begins in the minds of men,'' says India's leading art connoisseur and promoter of Indian contemporary art, Satish Kumar Modi, citing from the charter of the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).

RIGHTS-INDIA: Massacre of Peasants May Slow SEZ Plans

By Ranjit Devraj
It took the gruesome massacre of 15 peasants in police firing for the provincial government of West Bengal to suspend the forcible acquisition of farming land it wants to hand over to an Indonesian conglomerate for development into a Special Economic Zone.

RIGHTS-INDIA: Massacre of Peasants May Slow SEZ Plans

By Ranjit Devraj
It took the gruesome massacre of 15 peasants in police firing for the provincial government of West Bengal to suspend the forcible acquisition of farming land it wants to hand over to an Indonesian conglomerate for development into a Special Economic Zone (SEZ).

POLITICS: India Deal Makes US a Nuclear Proliferator

By Ranjit Devraj
Campaigners for a nuclear-free South Asia are aghast at the potential nightmare that lies ahead following the nuclear technology and fuel deal announced here this week by visiting United States President George W. Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

TSUNAMI IMPACT: Mixed Blessing for Most Marginalised

By Ranjit Devraj
Although Chellapappa lost two of her children to the tsunami that smashed every home in the fishing village of Samanthanpettai on Dec. 26, 2004, she now has reason to smile: a brand new concrete-roof home with electricity, running water and a sanitary toilet.

POLITICS: India’s Foreign Minister Skids on ‘Oil-for-Food’ Scam

By Ranjit Devraj
Indian External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh, known for his staunch opposition to the invasion of Iraq, was compelled to stand down Monday for allegedly benefiting illegally from the United Nations' 'oil-for-food' scheme.

POLITICS: Kashmir Border to Open Despite Delhi Blasts

By Ranjit Devraj
While Saturday evening's serial blasts in the Indian capital claimed at least 60 lives, they have not stopped India and Pakistan from going ahead with plans to open the border in divided, insurgency-hit Kashmir to facilitate relief operations for the survivors of the Oct. 8 earthquake.

POLITICS: Kashmir Border to Open Despite Delhi Blasts

By Ranjit Devraj
While Saturday evening's serial blasts in the Indian capital claimed at least 60 lives, they have not stopped India and Pakistan from going ahead with plans to open the border in divided, insurgency-hit Kashmir to facilitate relief operations for the survivors of the Oct. 8 earthquake.

SOUTH ASIA: Tragic Quake a Test for Indo-Pakistan Peace Process

By Ranjit Devraj
The fact that Saturday's earthquake - with a death toll in the tens of thousands and climbing - had its epicentre in Kashmir, one of the most heavily militarised areas of the world, presents a test for India and Pakistan, which have contested the divided Himalayan territory for over 55 years but are now on a path of reconciliation.
Credit:

SOUTH ASIA: Tragic Quake a Test for Indo-Pakistan Peace Process

By Ranjit Devraj
The fact that Saturday's earthquake - with a death toll in the tens of thousands and climbing - had its epicentre in Kashmir, one of the most heavily militarised areas of the world, presents a test for India and Pakistan, which have contested the divided Himalayan territory for over 55 years but are now on a path of reconciliation.

/ARTS WEEKLY/MUSIC-INDIA: Anthem Against Poverty from ‘Mozart of Madras’

By Ranjit Devraj
If ever music could wipe poverty off the face of the earth, then India's internationally rated musical genius, A. R. Rahman's latest composition, "Pray for My Brother", could do a job the United Nations dearly wants to see happen.

HEALTH: New Haj Rules to Push Polio Vaccination in India

By Ranjit Devraj
New polio vaccination rules for Haj (the annual pilgrimage to holy Mecca) announced by the Saudi Arabian government are expected to have a salutary effect on Muslim communities in India, who are otherwise reluctant to get their children immunised, say followers of the faith.

DEVELOPMENT: India Passes World’s Biggest Job Guarantee Plan

By Ranjit Devraj
India's communist-backed coalition government, led by the Congress party, passed revolutionary legislation in parliament Tuesday that guarantees 100 days of employment annually to every rural household in India, ignoring critics who said the law was impracticable and would foster corruption.

INDIA: Ghosts of 1984 Anti-Sikh Pogrom Haunt Congress Party

By Ranjit Devraj
Two decades after mobs, infuriated by the Oct.31, 1984 assassination of prime minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards, massacred more than 4,000 members of the religious sect, India's Congress party continues to pay a price for the pogrom.
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