Career
He was called the "youngest headmaster in the world" by British Broadcasting Corporation in October 2009, at the age of sixteen. Babar Ali is still a student himself, enrolled at the government-run Cossimbazar Raj Govinda Sundari High school in Beldanga, West Bengal. He had begun teaching at nine years of age, mostly as a game, and then decided to continue teaching other children at a larger scale.
There are 800 children learning at the school, starting from four or five years of age.
That the school is tuition-free makes it affordable for the poor in this economically deprived area, so that the school has been recognised to have helped increase literacy rates in the area. In Murshidabad there had been no governmental or private schools.
Pupils come from nearby villages and walk up to four kilometres in order to attend their lessons. Babar Ali succeeded in having his school recognized by the local authorities when he realised that this would entitle its pupils to the portion of free rice given to pupils at the end of the month by the government.