Education in India is a site of intense contestations. Instead of addressing the multiple inequalities of caste, class, and gender that are embedded in the social fabric, the neoliberal state has privileged only the rhetoric of ‘development’, ‘modernity’, and the ideals of the Right to Education. Growing populist authoritarianism, consumerism, an all-enveloping mass media, and the rise of new aspirational classes have compounded the problem further. However, despite these significant limitations, education is increasingly seen as a prized good that even the most disadvantaged seek. Differentiation and Disjunction is an incisive interrogation of India’s education system, and provides a sociological and social anthropological perspective to these complexities. The author examines a study, based on fifteen years of field work, of government elementary schools, highlighting their failure to consider the specific disadvantages of underprivileged children and their interests. She further discusses India’s highly differentiated schooling system—that range from the most neglected institutions offered to the poor to competitive international schools; studies policy documents to bring out the problems of decentralisation of elementary education administration; and critiques the limitations of current university education.