Colonel Shashank Ranjan has 33 years of experience in the Indian Army as an Infantry Officer. He served for almost 15 years in the Counter-Insurgency / Counter- Terrorism environment in Jammu & Kashmir and in the NorthEast Region. He has led his troops in defence diplomacy exercise with United States Marine Corps (USMC), in United Nations Peace Keeping Operations in Ethiopia-Eritrea and Human Assistance and Disaster Relief Operations in J&K and in Andaman and Nicobar Islands. In addition, Col Ranjan has held various instructional appointments during his service wherein he was involved in training of junior and mid-level army officers at tactical and operational levels. While posted with the Army Headquarters for three years, he was handling modernization and capital procurement projects of the Indian Army. Col Ranjan was a Research Fellow with Indian Army’s think tank, Centre for Land warfare Studies (CLAWS), New Delhi, where he carried out extensive research on Left Wing Extremism (LWE) and authored a book titled. ‘Resolving India’s Maoist Challenge – Looking beyond Security and Development’. In addition, he has numerous publications concerning terrorism and internal security issues to his credit that were published in several military journals. He regularly writes columns for various Indian national dailies like The Hindu, The Indian Express,The Telegraph, The Print etc. Col Ranjan is presently teaching at the OP Jindal Global University as Associate Professor of Practice as part of Jindal School of International Affairs (JSIA).