Education is considered as an essential component, not only in terms of knowledge generation but also as the basis on which human development is envisaged in the country. In India , education so far, has been considered as pivotal social sector investment to bridge the gap of socio-economic inequities through equal and quality access to education at all levels especially in rural and urban poor population. Since, lack of literacy and education has been stated as one of the perennial and key development problems that affect the progressive development of other sectors as well as human development, investment and attention towards education has been increasing by 1% every year. However, in comparison to Gross GDP the current expenditure is still below 6 %, the expected rate of investment in education of GDP. However, despite this India has been progress in educational set up in many folds. First, boosting higher education system by building institutions of excellence for technology and other streams. Secondly, to a greater extent India has also been able to strengthen and scale up its elementary education programme through SSA and other various programmatic and integrated schemes of Mid Day Meal Schemes, ICDS, DPEP and others. In spite of these efforts, India is still grappling to meet a benchmark of enrolment rates, curtailing drop out at primary level, access to quality education for all and proper teacher training/education.

India has variety of education development programmes introduced by government and NGOs. Among the most path breaking and successful model adopted to spread access of education is SSA in rural areas at an elementary level and now Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Mission for universalising quality secondary education with proper school infrastructure, teachers appointments, mid may meal scheme etc being established well. Along with this curriculum reforms too have been initiated at National level, by adopting National Curriculum Framework – 2005 by adopting a more progressive framework for quality education, giving an equal order importance to gender, environment, critical thinking. This is has been accompanied by passing of long impending Right to Education Bill, which guarantees access to quality education to all free of cost. In spite of these policy and programmatic measures some anomalies still remain unfulfilled. These are – redefining aims of education to be more holistically purposive, lack of teacher training/education framework, curriculum overhaul, inequality in access to quality education both in urban and rural areas.

There is a huge potential of adopting an approach of Education for Sustainable development to build a sound, effective and purposeful academic environment in India. Different approaches of education can be adopted in different educational context (formal, non formal, informal) to solve all the above and following stated issues that mark the edifice of SD of education – from the perspective of quality of education, socio-economic equal access, Curriculum to address current sustainable living perspective, all these could be done through adopting different educational approach like capacity building, training, workshops to share experience of teachers, curriculum makers, educational leaders to work towards educational development.