Education is championed as a fundamental human right. However, in India, inequality in education contributes the most to the overall inequality index. India’s Education Paradox critiques the growing interpersonal and interstate educational inequalities along with the falling standards in education, through previous education policies, and in the way analyses the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. Contesting the routine constructs of ‘inequality’ and ‘efficiency’ in education with the help of alternative paradigms, the author examines the subject in the context of wide-ranging regional economic disparities, to take us a step closer to understanding why India is at the crossroads between ‘expanding up’ and ‘expanding out’.