(Associate Researcher, December 2025 – Present)

BIOGRAPHY:

Kiran Bhatty is a senior researcher with her work lying at the intersection of education, social policy and political sociology. Most recently she has completed a study of youth in the 14-21 year-age group in Delhi NCR, examining their education status, aspirations, possibilities and challenges. This study was conducted at the Centre for Social and Economic Policy (CSEP), New Delhi., where she was a senior policy advisor.

Before joining CSEP, she was a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, where she researched institutional aspects of education provision including the frontline bureaucracy, regulatory mechanisms, systems of data management, accountability and other aspects of education governance. She continues to be a Senior Visiting Fellow there.

Prior to joining CPR she was the National Coordinator for RTE at the NCPCR- mandated to monitor the RTE Act. She has also worked as an Education specialist at UNICEF and on several research projects such as the PROBE report on Basic Education and the FOCUS report on early childhood care. In addition, she has coordinated research studies on education for the UNDP, UNESCO and the International Institute of Education and Planning (IIEP), and been a part of international research projects based at University of Warwick, Oxford and Brown.

She has been a member of several National Committees such as the Bordia Committee that drafted the guidelines for merging Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan [SSA] with RTE; the Committee for finalizing SSA norms under RTE; and chair of the MoE group set up for drafting guidelines for school social audits; member of the Advisory Committee for Data and Management Systems; Member Advisory Committee, for Education Policy and Member, Advisory Committee for formulating Curriculum for post-graduate courses on education, at the National University for Education Planning and Administration [NUEPA].

She has a PhD in Political Science from the School of Advanced Study in Social Sciences (EHESS) at Paris, France and a Master’s degree in Economics and an MPhil in Development Studies from the London School of Economics, UK. Kiran Bhatty has published widely in academic journals as well as in the national media.

She is currently working her book titled, Separate and Unequal: the education of Muslims in India. She is also working on a book co-authored along with Christophe Jaffrelot, Bernard Haykel and Mohsin Bhat titled: Muslims in Modi’s India: a minority in the era of Hindu nationalism, and co-editing a special issue of SAMAJ, with Odile Henri on Education in India.

PhD Fellowoship at CSH: September 2022 – August 2024

Visiting Doctoral Fellow: September 2024 – November 2025

Publications:

• Kiran Bhatty (forthcoming 2025). « Institutional aspects of education monitoring and the case for community monitoring », in Institutional Challenges in the Last Mile of Social Development, Routledge
• Kiran Bhatty (forthcoming 2025). « Data and governance in education: a review of the Indian Experience », in Verghese et al., (eds. )Improving Learning outcomes in Schools. Routledge.
• Kiran Bhatty, 2022. “The education system in India: promises to keep”, in The round table, Vol 111, p 365-380. [Special issue on 75 years of India’s Independence, September 2022]  https://doi.org/10.1080/00358533.2022.2082690
• Kiran Bhatty, Nandini Sundar, 2020. “Sliding from majoritarianism toward fascism: Educating India under the Modi regime”, in International Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1177/0268580920937226
• Kiran Bhatty, 2022. “Community-Based Reforms in the Monitoring Architecture of Elementary Education in India”, in The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education Reforms, https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.430