Educating for a climate-changed future in India: diagnosing a mandate-without-mechanism condition

India’s constitutional provisions, Supreme Court directives, and National Curriculum Framework make its formal commitment to climate change education unusually explicit, yet classroom implementation remains uneven. This article combines analysis of India’s multilevel policy architecture with a structured review of 72 empirical studies published from 2007 to 2026. We identify a mandate-without-mechanism condition: policy ambition is extensive, but assessment, pre-service teacher education, in-service professional development, monitoring, and school-level time and leadership do not consistently reinforce intended learning. Teacher capacity emerges as the primary leverage point connecting curricular intent to classroom practice. Evidence also shows that short interventions generally increase knowledge more reliably than agency or sustained behavior, while higher state-level priority creates enabling conditions without documented differences in student learning outcomes. Closing the policy-practice gap therefore requires alignment among curriculum, assessment, teacher preparation, professional learning, and monitoring rather than additional mandates. India’s experience offers a comparative diagnostic for other large, federal, exam-driven education systems in the Global South.