Amit Ahuja, Associate Professor of Political Science at UCSB, was named by ThePrint as one of India's political thought leaders to watch out for in the next decade. Ahuja is the author of Mobilizing the Marginalized: Ethnic Parties without Ethnic Movements, which won the 2020 New India Foundation Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay Book Prize. He recently coedited a new volume with Devesh Kapur, Internal Security in India: Violence, Order, and the State, and is currently working on a new book examining how multiethnic states manage the challenge of building national armies.

ThePrint formed a jury panel of experts, including CSDS senior fellow and columnist Yogendra Yadav, senior editor and commentator Vir Sanghvi, Carnegie senior fellow Milan Vaishnav, and CSDS associate professor and author Hilal Ahmed, to nominate a list of thinkers in the fields of geostrategic affairs, economy, social science, and political thought. The jury identified noted intellectuals such as Amit Ahuja for evolving new prisms of studying politics and bringing innovative tools and insights to understand the 21st century.