Dr. Madhumita Bandyopadhyay is a Professor & Head in the Department of School and Non-Formal Education at the National Institute of Educational Research and Training (NIEPA). She has received her Phd. Degree in Geography from Centre for Studies of Regional Development, School of Social Science, Jawahar Lal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her interests include policy analysis, decentralized planning and management, and education of girls and deprived groups. She has conducted field-based and empirical research on various development issues, including education. She has been involved as lead researcher in a DFID-funded international consortium on research on Educational, Access Transition and Equity in which NIEPA has been a partner institute with the University of Sussex, U.K. She has completed an international project funded by British Council and ked by University of Sussex UK. She has contributed papers to many national and international conferences i.e. BAICE, BERA, UKFEIT, CIES, WCCES, WAC, CESI, IFOR and published papers in many journals and books. In her most recent publication, she jointly edited a book on `Education, Democracy and Development' with Prof. N.V. Varghese. She has been the present focal point for ANTRIEP, a net work of Asian countries in collaboration with IIEP Paris and editor of the it's Newsletter since 2016.