I asked Adrian Thurston the author of ragel if he would support help this
project.
His reply to me is here:

Hi Rustom,

I can certainly help with guidance. I'm about to relocate across much of
canada and so I won't be able to crack open code very easiliy.

Aurélien: my apologies I haven't responded. I certainly support your
effort, just have had some big career/life changes going on.

Regards,
Adrian

As for Nicolas:

FYI, there is already an elisp Org parser being worked on in development
branch of Org mode. It isn't finished yet, but still advanced enough so
a generic exporter could be built upon it.

Is there any interest in ignoring it and restart all the work from
scratch?

Yes I agree, no point redoing work unnecessarily.  Maybe the optimal
solution would be for Aurélien to work with Nicolas and Adrian to minimize
useless rework?

Aurélien you now need to say what are your preferences in this matter.

Rusi