Through exemplary knowledge and hard-work Abhinav Pandya has made a name for himself in the field of international affairs. He is the founder and CEO of the USANAS foundation based in Udaipur, Rajasthan.

Abhinav Pandya hails from the city of Udaipur, although he is basically from a village in the Dungarpur district of Rajasthan. His father was in the state police service so they had to move around a lot due to frequent transfers before they finally settled in Udaipur. His family consists of his parents, his sister, who is a public health professional currently working in Bangalore, and his brother, who is a law practitioner.

An important landmark of life

Abhinav regards his tenth standard in school to be a huge turning point in his life. As it was the time when his father was posted as the divisional chief of CID’s intelligence branch, where he used to deal with issues realted to terrorism, counter-terrosim, narcotics, radicalization, etc and their impact on the state’s security.

Growing up watching his father deal with these kinds of issues instilled a deep interest in Abhinav about this field and eventually he became determined to make a career in this field. So after completing his tenth class, he chose humanities subject and scored extraordinary marks in his twelfth standard and was a merit holder of his batch.

Getting an amazing exposure

After twelfth he went to St. Stephen's college which was affiliated to the Delhi University. In the college, he was associated with Commonwealth Society of India which had a lot of dealings with foriegn affairs and embassies. There he got the chance to visit Singapore as a representative of DU for the Australasian debate competition and he was also sent to the UK in the capacity of Vice President and Secretary General of the Commonwealth Society of India Students Wing.

After completing his graduation, Abhinav started preparing for the civil services examination and eventually he cleared it too. But he was more inclined to explore the academic side of the field of international relations. So he went to the US to pursue his higher studies from the Ivy league University, where he did Masters in Public Affairs. He also stood for student council elections where he encountered international crowds from all over the world and got first hand experience in dealings of international politics and diplomacy. Eventually he won the elections and created an organisation called the International Affairs Forum with the idea of promoting soft power in creating public policy and diplomacy.

A remarkable career ahead

After completing his Masters, he worked with the United Nations Organisation in the ILO in the capacity of a consultant for two years.

After a while, Abhinav realised that his core interest was working in the security field rather in the field of diplomacy, essentially for India’s national security. Consequently, in 2016, he returned to India and started working as an advisor/consultant with the Vidhya Bhawan Sansthan in Udaipur.

Then Abhinav got introduced to the Vivekananda International Foundation which is a premier national security think-tank in India and its patronage is Mr. Ajit Doval- the NSA of India. There he was under the supervision of Mr. C. D. Sahay- the former R&AW chief and he mostly worked on terrorism and wrote several papers on terror financing, intelligence affairs, security affairs, etc. He has also written a book on radicalisation in India and another one on terror financing is just about to be released.

After some time, he decided to start a project on radicalisation and then Abhinav went to Kashmir for his field study. He says that it was a marvellous exposure working there as he dealt with many issues like militancy and anti-India activities in Kashmir. After studying Kashmir and a lot of research on the subject, he perceived that a cult of suicide bombing was emerging in Kashmir and just after six to seven months of his prediction, the unfortunate Pulwama suicide bombing took place.

After coming back from Kashmir, Abhinav briefed many senior officials in the government about the situation in the valley and subsequently he was appointed as the security advisor to the Governor of Kashmir. There he managed youth affairs and essentially dealt with the state administrative issues. He also learned about  techniques used by the terrorists like controlling the narrative and toppling the peaceful status quo of a country and how anti-India propaganda is shaped by the adversaries.

It was a risky assignment in Kashmir due to the persistent threat level but he managed to do his job quite efficiently and sometimes also worked on the policy making front for  the central government.

Finally after gaining good experience, Abhinav returned to Udaipur in the June of 2020. This was pretty much the time when the India-China standoff was taking place in the Galwan valley. Naturally at that time China was engaged in information warfare with India so he thought of creating this organisation of his own which was, the USANAS foundation with the aim of countering the Chinese narrative. The USANAS foundation is a geopolitical and security affairs organisation of India. It is a non-profit, non-governmental organisation with no political or ideological inclinations.

During the lockdown period, they successfully organised about twenty webinars with very prominent guests from all across the globe. His team of highly acknowledged academicians and experts from many different countries regularly publishes articles on their website.

The future plans of action for the USANAS

Abhinav plans to start a USANAS scholar’s program in the future with the vision of engaging students and academicians mostly from the small cities of India, and make them aware about the burning issues of international politics and if possible arrange a trip for them to the conflict zones to provide them a first hand experience of the situation.

With the scholar’s program, Abhinav plans to propel the engagement of the corporate sector in the issues of statecraft, as he strongly believes that the security affairs of a region greatly influence the business there. Thus he advises that the corporate sector must consult the experts of security affairs of a region before making an investment there.

Knocking off the hurdles of life

For Abhinav it was not very easy to pass over the conventional career fields like those of joining an IIT to become an engineer or joining the civil services. He always had the vision of creating something which is established in the roots of Rajasthan but makes an impact globally. But for achieving that, he knew he needed a lot of resources and family support which he initially didn’t enjoy. He was even criticised for a while for leaving the conventional career fields.

In the US too, after completing his Masters, it was a tough decision for him to return to India after seeing most of his fellow students joining the corporate sector and getting very handsome salaries.

But in spite of all the procedural hardships and challenges, he finally got his priorities straight and did what he had dreamt of doing.

A personal life pertaining to peace and spirituality

Anubhav believes that India has a unique strength of being spiritually inclined as spirituality is an important part of life here. His role models, as he mentions, are all the saints who attained a spiritual enlightenment through their austerity. He recognises the role of his grandfather who was a highly spiritual man himself in instilling in him the value of spirituality.

Anubhav values the importance of both education and experience but he is of the opinion that there is a third factor which is understanding and it plays a major role in success.

Anubhav’s advice to anyone who is planning to make a career in this field is that they should start reading a lot and thereafter try to develop a multidimensional understanding of this subject.

Anubhav goes running every evening and likes to exercise. He really loves watching movies and web series and takes out time from his busy schedule to watch good movies or web series. He also likes to travel a lot and interact with different people and takes out time to do that too.