Montessori in Anganwadis: India’s Boldest Education Gamble

Walk into a cramped Anganwadi in Delhi’s Shahdara and you see it: a few posters curling at the edges, a steel trunk of toys unopened, and children sitting in neat rows chanting alphabets.

This is not learning. It is survival.

Now picture this instead: children pouring water into cups, polishing brass, counting wooden beads, and teaching each other colours in whispers. That’s Montessori.

And for the first time, India is trying to bring it not just to South Delhi nurseries charging five-figure fees but to government Anganwadis in Delhi and Rajasthan.

This isn’t a side story. It could be India’s most radical education reform in decades.

Scale and urgency

Let’s not kid ourselves. Nearly 68% of India’s 3–5-year-olds are outside any preschool.

By the time they enter Class 1, they are already behind, stumbling through textbooks meant for children who had years of play-based preparation.

That’s not just an education gap — it’s a national handicap.

India runs 13.95 lakh Anganwadis (2024–25 data). Rajasthan alone has 61,885, Delhi 10,897.

The government has pledged to turn two lakh into Saksham Anganwadis; 15,728 were upgraded by December 2024, and 11,000 were inaugurated in a single day.

The scale is breathtaking. But buildings don’t teach. Pedagogy does.

Montessori without price tag

For decades, Montessori was a badge of privilege. Parents in South Delhi and Jaipur’s Civil Lines bragged about “sensorial play” while paying more than a middle-class family’s monthly salary.

For the poor, preschool meant nothing more than plastic alphabets and blackboards.

Now Rajasthan is setting up Bal Vatikas inside government schools, with Anganwadis attached. Delhi is mapping centres to primary schools and rolling out the Aadharshila curriculum (3–6 years) under the Poshan Bhi Padhai Bhi mission.

The philosophy is simple: let children explore, touch, pour, sort, and question.

Montessori without the price tag. If it works, it will be nothing short of a social revolution.

The UNESCO alarm bell

UNESCO’s Global Report on Early Childhood Education (2024) makes for a stark reading:
37% of the world’s children will miss basic reading skills by 2030 if nothing changes.

The world needs six million more pre-primary teachers and an extra $21 billion a year to close the gap.

India actually has the machinery others don’t: the Anganwadi.

What it lacked was seriousness about learning. That gap is finally being filled with new curricula, worker training, and Saksham upgrades.

UNESCO says every child deserves at least one free year of preschool.
India can go further — three years, free, for every child, delivered through Anganwadis.

Delhi and Rajasthan: Where the quiet revolution begins

Rajasthan’s Bal Vatikas are embedding pre-primary directly inside PM SHRI schools, pairing Anganwadis with primaries, and extending worker training to 6–12 months.

That’s a commitment to pedagogy, not hollow promises.

Delhi, with its dense network of nearly 11,000 centres, has scale on its side.

The capital is already using Poshan Tracker to monitor Anganwadi performance. With standardised daily Montessori-inspired sessions, Delhi could write the urban playbook for preschool reform.

The underlying message is clear: Montessori cannot remain the privilege of a Khan Market play school.
It must become the right of every child in Najafgarh and Bharatpur.

The danger of the “kit trap”

Here’s the risk: thinking Montessori means buying kits. It doesn’t.

Kits don’t teach, adults do.

India has been here before — learning boxes gathering dust while rote drills continue.

The red line is this: train the worker, not just the child.

Long, hands-on training cycles, not weekend workshops, must become the norm.

The bottom line

If children spend ages three to six in well-run, play-based Anganwadis, they walk into Class 1 confident, curious, and ready.

That single shift will do more for India’s workforce, health, and economy than any engineering college built a decade later.

Montessori in Anganwadis is not an experiment in pedagogy.
It is a national gamble on equity.

And if India pulls it off, we won’t just be democratising an “elite” method.

We’ll be proving that the future of education doesn’t always begin with an iPad.

Sometimes, it begins with a bead, a brass vessel, and the quiet determination of a child in a Delhi Anganwadi.