Ranjit Rae is an alumnus of the 1972 Batch of St. Columba’s School, New Delhi. A distinguished diplomat with over 30 years of experience in the Indian Foreign Service (IFS), Ranjit Rae started his career as a Lecturer in Economics, at St Stephen’s College, Delhi University during 1978-1980.
Thereafter he joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1980 and retired after 36 years of service in various capacities in several countries. During his long career, he was involved in complex negotiations both at bilateral and multilateral levels including in organizations such as the United Nations, Commonwealth and Non-Aligned Movement. He has worked in conflict areas/conflict situations such as Kosovo as well as in the United Nations Peace-Keeping Operations Division in New York.
At Headquarters, he has been staff officer to the Foreign Secretary, Director in the Office of the External Affairs Minister and Press Secretary to the President of India.
As Joint Secretary (North) in the External Affairs Ministry, he handled bilateral relations with India’s Himalayan neighbors, Nepal and Bhutan.
Rae served as Ambassador of India to Hungary (with concurrent accreditation to Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina), Vietnam and Nepal, from where he retired.
After retirement, Rae was appointed to the Commonwealth High-Level Group on Governance. He is currently an advisor to the Peace Division of the United Nations Institute for Training and Research.
Mr. Rae holds a Post-Graduate Degree in Economics with a strong grounding in organizational matters, including strategic planning, budgeting, and personnel issues.
Mr. Rae has written several articles for Indian newspapers on Nepal. His first book, Kathmandu Dilemma, Resetting India-Nepal Ties has been published by Penguin Random House in September 2021. The book is meticulously nuanced and the insightful perspective of India’s intimate, yet troubled relationship with Nepal.
Arjit Singh Arora is a meritorious alumnus of the 2021 Batch of St. Columbas School, New Delhi.
Hardworking and industrious, Arjit is the School Topper of Class XII, 2021, and has secured a 99 percentile aggregate in Science, in his Board Examinations, placing him on the Merit List of the School for the year.
He aims to pursue a career in engineering and lend a constructive hand in the development and evolution of our society. An active participant in interschool activities and National Level Olympiads, Arjit has proven himself to be a winner and advises his fellow Coumbans to be multifaceted leaders as they surge ahead in all spheres of their lives.
SANDEEP BAMZAI is a die hard news junkie, having worked on all major news platforms in positions of pre-eminence for the last 40 years. Though he began his career as a cricket writer with The Statesman in Kolkata, he has constantly reinvented himself to stay in sync with the times. He has worked in Kolkata, Mumbai and New Delhi with the biggest media houses. Returning to Delhi, the last two decades has seen him on the news frontline as National Business Editor of Hindustan Times, Executive Editor at TV Today, Editor at Mail Today, Editor-in-Chief and COO at Financial Chronicle/Asian Age and for the last three years, CEO and Editor-in-Chief of the independent newswire Indo-Asian News Service (IANS). He has also worked at The Indian Express, Illustrated Weekly of India, Sunday Observer, Business India and Dalal Street Journal. A life, he describes as a truly fulfilling journey.
An alumnus of the 1981 Batch of the prestigious St. Columba’s School in Delhi, he graduated in Economics from the University of Calcutta. He has written four books, including Guts Glory : The Bombay Cricket Story, Bonfire of Kashmiriyat: Deconstructing the Accession and his latest award winning and best selling book – Princestan : How Nehru, Patel and Mountbatten made India, which is receiving rave reviews. He is now working on his fifth book – Kashmir : The Gilded Cage – which is to be published in early 2022 by Rupa. He loves the space where politics and economics converge. He was awarded the Amity University Media Excellence Award in 2016 for his contribution to media.
Given his deep rooted interest in politics, business, cinema, movies, music and of course the beautiful game cricket, his approach as a team leader and Editor has always been well rounded. As one of the senior most working Editors in India, he has broken innumerable stories and interviewed a slew of global and Indian personalities during his career, he hasn’t called time yet because he reckons the human mind is like a sponge where learning needs to be absorbed constantly and continuously.
Even as he runs the largest Independent and global news wire, he remains obsessed in his parallel avatar of an amateur historian. One can expect many more titles coming from his notebook in the future. Particularly detailing the vast swathe of the Indian Independence and freedom movement. His latest book Princestan has just received the prestigious Kalinga Lit Fest Book of the Year Award and while he is humbled and gratified by this award, this he believes will act as a whetstone to produce more modern historical works. He has also been commissioned to write a pictorial history on Kashmir by a large publishing house. Having survived two rounds of brutal catechism in the form of the dreaded covid which was all pervasive and a destroyer of businesses, he thinks that transposing the learnings of each round has helped him in understanding the complex world of news better. With consumption of news remaining dynamic in what is now a dystopian world, a digital news platform like Indo-Asian News Service has to be at the cutting edge to stay relevant and contemporary, this is what he is striving to be as the first among equals.