Bhushan began his education in his native India, completing his undergraduate degree  and his master's from the University of Jodhpur. He received his Ph.D. in chemistry (working on structure elucidation of natural products isolated from certain desert plants) in 1978 at the University of Jodhpur. Bhushan joined as lecturer at the University of Roorkee (now Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, India) in 1979 and was later selected for the position of full professor of chemistry in 1996 and served there till retirement in 2018.