The digital abyss: India’s race between empowerment and exclusion

India stands at a historic inflection point. With the Jan Dhan-Aadhaar-Mobile (JAM) Trinity and transformative platforms like UPI redefining digital governance, the nation has emerged as a global beacon of Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI). Over 800 million Indians are now online, transacting, learning and connecting in ways unimaginable just a decade ago.

Yet, amid this triumph of technology lies a quieter tragedy: the digital divide, a chasm not merely of access, but of empowerment. This is not just a question of who owns a smartphone, but who can use it meaningfully. Beneath the glittering façade of “Digital India” persists a structural inequity that mirrors and magnifies existing social and economic hierarchies.

Mapping the new inequality

The digital divide in India is layered, complex and stubbornly persistent.

The geography of disconnection: Despite BharatNet’s ambitious plan to link over two lakh panchayats, rural internet connectivity often remains patchy, slow or unreliable. The infrastructure exists on paper, but in practice, last-mile connectivity falters under poor maintenance and inconsistent power supply.

The gendered web: According to studies, Indian women are 30% less likely than men to access mobile internet. In a society where digital platforms increasingly mediate education, healthcare and finance, this gender gap translates into lost opportunities and lost agency.

The economic wall: Smartphones and data may be cheaper than ever, but digital literacy, the real passport to empowerment, remains a privilege. Those without basic literacy or digital skills are systematically excluded from high-value opportunities like e-commerce, online jobs or even government services.

The language lockout: English still dominates India’s digital landscape. Although projects like BHASHINI aim to bridge this linguistic chasm, the absence of quality content in regional languages prevents millions from engaging meaningfully online.

When connectivity doesn’t mean inclusion

The digital divide doesn’t just limit access. It shapes outcomes across governance, economy and social justice.

Governance on a broken signal: E-governance tools like UMANG and direct benefit transfer hinge on digital access. When that access fails, citizens are excluded from entitlements meant for them. The Supreme Court has warned that such exclusions violate the Right to Education and, by extension, the right to dignity itself.

The unequal digital economy: As India’s digital economy grows, it disproportionately benefits those equipped with tech skills. The informal sector, still the backbone of India’s workforce, struggles to leverage platforms like ONDC or e-Shram, leaving small enterprises stagnant while digital elites surge ahead.

Social and democratic fractures: Limited digital literacy also weakens democracy. Without equitable access to reliable information, misinformation spreads unchecked, distorting public opinion and hollowing out informed citizenship.

Artificial intelligence: The great leveler or the great divider?

Artificial Intelligence could be the bridge that finally closes India’s digital gap, or the wedge that makes it permanent.

The bright side: AI-driven tools promise personalised education, real-time language translation and predictive healthcare. In principle, they could democratise opportunity helping rural students learn in their native languages, enabling doctors to diagnose remotely and expanding credit to the unbanked.

The dark side: But AI learns from data and data reflects bias. When algorithms are trained on urban, English-speaking, affluent datasets, they inevitably misrepresent rural and marginalised realities. The result? Skewed decision-making, exclusionary credit scoring and algorithmic discrimination.

Moreover, AI-driven automation threatens millions of low-skill jobs, while the high-skill AI workforce remains tiny and urban. Add to that the cost of high-speed internet and AI-capable devices, the new AI divide becomes the third, and perhaps deepest, layer of India’s digital inequality.

The way forward

Bridging India’s digital abyss requires more than cables and towers. It demands vision, ethics and human-centered design.

Infrastructure as a public good: Complete BharatNet with quality benchmarks and scale up PM-WANI to make Wi-Fi access as ubiquitous as electricity. Connectivity must become a right, not a luxury.

From literacy to fluency: Expand PMGDISHA beyond basic skills to include digital reasoning, AI literacy and online safety. Embed digital skills into school and vocational curricula under the NEP 2020 so every student learns to think—and not just click—digitally.

Trust and transparency: Implement the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 rigorously. Mandate bias audits for government AI tools and ensure multilingual access across e-governance platforms. Encourage Indian startups to build local-language AI that works on low bandwidth, ensuring innovation doesn’t exclude.

Building a human-centric digital future

India’s digital story is both inspiring and cautionary. The nation has built one of the world’s most inclusive infrastructures, but risks creating one of its most exclusive societies if equity is ignored. The next phase of Digital India must be about digital justice, ensuring that every citizen, regardless of language, income or location, has not just access, but empowerment.

The digital divide is not destiny. It is a design flaw and design flaws can be corrected. India’s true technological triumph will not be measured by how many are connected, but by how many are truly empowered. Only then will the digital tide lift every boat, not just a privileged few.