Who gets to have a childhood?

In contemporary India, childhood is often romanticised as a universal, protected phase of innocence, curiosity, and care. Yet, a closer look at early education reveals an unequal reality. Childhood is stratified, structured, and, in many cases, denied. Step into an elite urban preschool and one encounters carefully curated spaces with low student-teacher ratios, sensory play corners, inquiry-based learning, and an emphasis on emotional well-being. Childhood here is extended, protected, and enriched. Play is not just permitted; it is pedagogically valued. Mistakes are part of learning, curiosity is cultivated, and the child is seen as an active agent.

Now contrast this with an under-resourced setting such as an anganwadi or a low-fee private school. Here, the discourse of “early learning” often translates into premature academic pressure. Children as young as three or four are made to trace alphabets, memorise numbers, and sit through rigid routines. Play becomes a luxury. The
emphasis shifts from exploration to compliance and from curiosity to correctness. This contrast is not incidental. It reflects a deeper political economy of childhood.

At its core, early education in India is marked by a paradox. The same system that encourages play-based, child-centric pedagogies for the privileged often prescribes discipline-heavy, outcome-oriented learning for the marginalised. In effect, the children who most need nurturing, exploratory environments are the least likely to receive them. Why does this happen? Part of the answer lies in how we conceptualise readiness. For many under-resourced families, education is a pathway out of precarity. Schools respond by foregrounding visible, measurable outcomes like reading, writing, and counting, often at the cost of developmental appropriateness. There is a palpable anxiety. If children are not seen to be learning in conventional terms, the system is failing them. However, this anxiety produces a troubling outcome: compressed childhood.

When early education becomes synonymous with early academic performance, children are inadvertently denied the very experiences that make learning meaningful. These include play, social interaction, imagination, and emotional expression. What is presented as rigour is often a form of pedagogical violence, particularly when imposed on young children whose developmental needs are fundamentally different.

There is also a structural dimension to this inequality. Early childhood educators in under-resourced settings are frequently underpaid, undertrained, and overburdened. Expecting them to implement nuanced, play-based pedagogies without systemic support is unrealistic. Meanwhile, elite institutions invest heavily in teacher training, infrastructure, and curriculum design. This further widens the gap. The result is a dual-track system of early education. One track cultivates agency, creativity, and confidence. The other prioritises discipline, repetition, and early performance. Over time, these differences do not just shape learning outcomes but also dispositions, self-worth, and the very sense of what it means to be a learner. This is why early childhood education must be reframed. Importantly, policy discourse has already acknowledged the centrality of early years. The National Education Policy 2020 integrates ages three to eight into the foundational stage and emphasises play-based, holistic, and developmentally appropriate learning; however, its implementation remains uneven.

If we accept that childhood lays the foundation for all future learning, then unequal childhoods produce unequal futures. The issue is not simply about access to schooling but about the quality and nature of experiences within those spaces. Who gets to ask questions without fear? Who is encouraged to imagine? Who is allowed to fail safely? And crucially, who is not? Addressing this demands a fundamental shift in how early education is valued and resourced.

Investments in teacher training, particularly in play-based and socio-emotional learning approaches, are critical. It also requires rethinking assessment practices that push academic benchmarks into inappropriate age groups.

Equally important is challenging the societal belief that earlier is better when it comes to formal learning. Public investment must prioritise early childhood as foundational, not supplementary. Accountability frameworks should shift from narrow academic outcomes to holistic indicators such as well-being, engagement, and social development.

When childhood itself becomes unequal, education ceases to be an equaliser. It becomes a mechanism of reproduction. In that moment, we must ask whether we are nurturing learners or merely sorting them. Childhood should not be a privilege. It should be a right.

(The writer is pursuing a PhD in Political Science and the
co-author of Creativity and
Critical Pedagogy in Education)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.