Editorial . . . . . . . . 

There is no arguing that one of the most important leading changes over the last ten years, globally, has been the digitalization of services. Introducing efficiency and accountability, generating new employment possibilities, boosting interconnectivity, and promoting economic growth, are guiding socio-economic transformation at the grassroots level. Governments and their constituent bodies are embracing digitalization in order to offer citizens user-friendly government services even while lowering the cost of providing those services. The current pandemic has also highlighted the inequalities between the haves and the have-nots, even while these advancements demonstrate the enormous promise of the digital revolution. In the Covid-induced digital acceleration, these digital gaps have left a very big number of people behind. With its own set of difficulties, India’s experience with digitalization has been genuinely exceptional. Over the past few years, more people are using the internet. The rate at which people are using digital techniques in their daily life was further accelerated by the Covid-19 outbreak. The number of sellers increased across almost all e-commerce marketplace platforms. From 3,76,000 vendors in 2020 to 1.78 million sellers in 2021, the number of sellers on the Government eMarketplace (GeM) for Micro, Small, and Medium-Sized Enterprises (MSMEs) increased. About 28% of MSMEs witnessed a doubling of their digital sales, and another 23% saw a growth of 50% to 100% through digital channels in a single year. The so-called success story, however, is not without its drawbacks. In India, digitalization has greatly improved the lives of the average person and opened up new prospects for them. For the “ordinary woman,” however, this is not the case. Gender disparity has gotten worse as a result of the pandemic. Due to different family attitudes and biases, female students suffered more from the pandemic’s compulsory move to online learning and had substantially less access to digital networks than male students. Only 35% of Indian women, according to reports, have access to the internet. Ten million or more girls could fail their classes, which could lead to early marriages or child labour. For most females, education is their only kind of social security.

Both extreme poverty and extreme wealth are intertwined in the Indian economy. Over 46 million people fell into poverty last year, despite India producing 40 more billionaires. Since access to digital services is still mostly limited to the privileged classes and income disparity is rising quickly, rather than eradicating poverty, digitalization is entrenching it. The challenges faced by the poor in obtaining any benefits from digital infrastructure have multiplied since only 3% of India’s poorest 20% of families have access to a computer, and only 9% have internet connectivity. The rural population continues to be underserved or unserved, adding to the digital divide. Rural India struggles to even secure access to functional internet due to intermittent electricity, affordability issues, geographical difficulties, and the high cost of infrastructure. For a very big population that is not well-versed in English, another barrier is the dearth of enough content in the local tongue. Low digital literacy in India is partly a result of limited internet availability. Only 20% of Indians, according to research, have the technical know-how to effectively utilize digital services. Only 10% of people in the country were digitally literate in 2016, which made it difficult to administer assistance programmes. Although the internet holds the key to opening the next stage of the economy if people are not properly trained and inducted they may not have the opportunity to participate. To encourage more women to utilize the internet, social stigmas around it must be eliminated.