Publication Date
2025
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© 2025 The Authors. This is an Open Access article distributed under the Creative Commons CC-BY license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)
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openAccess
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Abstract
The Indian economy has achieved significant progress in the recent years with the country expected to contribute about 16 percent of the global growth. However, at the sub-national level economic development has been quite disparate over the decades with widening inequality between the richer western and southern states and other parts of the country. Moreover, the pandemic has revealed sharp inequalities in the access to digital technology especially in access to school education, finance, and health. In this study we examine the digital divide in India, mainly between rural and urban areas at the sub-national level. Specifically, our study builds Digital Infrastructure Index (DII) and the Digital Skills Index (DSI) for a sample of 18 Indian states, separately for rural and urban populations within each state. We then measure rural-urban digital divide for both indices separately. Further we examine the relationship between the indices and socio- economic indicators. Our findings suggest that the “Digital India” growth story is far from equitable and that the low-income states and the rural population deserve greater attention.
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Citation
Arora R and Sapre N (2025) Rural-Urban Digital Divide: Evidence from Indian States. International Journal of Finance and Economics. Accepted for publication.
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