Efforts to improve the "quality" of education for all in government primary schools in India have seen a shift towards child-centred teaching. This paper examines the "Joyful Learning" programme, an example of a pedagogic reform implemented in rural primary schools in the southern Indian state of Karnataka. Through an empirical analysis of teachers' pedagogic discourses, I explore what it means to introduce child-centred pedagogic principles in low-income, rural Indian contexts. Of particular interest to this paper is how new forms of pedagogic control in child-centred approaches might be understood and mediated by teachers. The analysis reveals how the social controls of knowledge acquisition can remain unchallenged, and hidden, by the rhetoric of this child-centred pedagogy. The discussions reflect on the need for more complex and contextual considerations of pedagogy in attempts to achieve "quality" universal education. (Contains 1 table and 4 notes.)