An alumnus of Jawaharlal Nehru University, Ali titled his PhD dissertation ‘Liberalization and Its Impact on Handloom Industry in India: A Case Study of Muslim Weavers of Banaras’. He studied the democratic assertion of Bihar’s Pasmanda Muslims for his MPhil. Prior to joining GIDS, Ali was a research officer in the Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability (CBGA), New Delhi. Besides co-authoring a working paper titled ‘Social Security Provisioning in Bihar: A Case for Universal Old Age Pension’, he has published four research papers and two commentaries in international journals and contributed to several publications