After listing the aims and objectives of the Institute for Socially Disadvantaged Groups' Educational Improvement (ISDGEI), in Kolhapur, India, this collection of seven articles discusses prospects, problems, and successes of providing universal elementary education to the children of India. Articles: (1) discuss quantitative and qualitative dimensions of the Indian educational system; (2) indicate some of the principal factors involved in the failure to fulfill the constitutional obligation to provide universal elementary education, and identify steps to be taken to improve the situation; (3) list principles of the United Nations' Declaration of the Rights of the Child; (4) sketch the expansion of volunteer activity in India; (5) outline ways distance education can address demands made on the educational system; (6) describe the construction of a non-formal measure of adult learners' progress in literacy; and (7) describe successes and difficulties experienced in implementing a kindergarten program in the context of 100 percent illiteracy in an urban slum, the expansion of the program, salient features of the instructional techniques employed in the schools of the ISDGEI, approaches to changing students' behavior, teaching standard Marathi, improving children's language skills, providing multiple points of entry into the program, introducing vocational education, the partition of the program into separate units for infants and children of different ages and for different educational purposes, and other activities. (RH)