Bala is an education researcher and social entrepreneur with vast experience in teaching, research, advocacy, organization development and school leadership. He is the Founder-Director at India Institute (www.indiai.org), a non-profit think tank working in the areas of education, property rights and rule of law. His study, "The Private School Revolution in Bihar: Findings from a survey in Patna Urban" (with James Tooley & Pauline Dixon), is India's first landscape study of the private school ecosystem in a city. It won the Templeton Freedom Award in 2012. He has also launched several outreach initiatives such as ‘itorney’, an android based mobile application to secure legal rights in India for which he won the 2014 Global Think Tank Shark Tank Grand Prize; Niti Express, a radio-based awareness project to promote legal literacy in Hindi through nano tales; and India Property Rights Alliance, a network of organizations and individuals committed to securing property rights for all.