Digital Education Beyond Access: Reimagining Educational Justice in India's Digital Transformation Era

Abstract

Digital education has become central to India’s post‑COVID transformation, catalysed by NEP 2020, the Digital India Mission and platforms such as SWAYAM, DIKSHA, PM eVidya and NDEAR. Yet national datasets on schools, households and higher education reveal that rapid digital expansion has unfolded over entrenched fault lines of class, gender, caste, tribe, region and language, leaving open the question of whether technology is narrowing or simply recoding educational inequalities. Existing research has largely examined digital infrastructure or learning outcomes in isolation, with limited attention to digital justice or to the emerging challenges of generative AI in unequal contexts.

This chapter addresses that gap by asking whether India’s digital education push between 2018 and 2026 has reduced educational inequality or transformed old exclusions into digital form. Using secondary data from UDISE+, AISHE, NSS 75th Round, NFHS‑5, TRAI, NITI Aayog and international sources (UNESCO, UNICEF, OECD, World Bank, ITU), it maps rural–urban, gender, caste and regional disparities in digital capital and educational access, and critically reviews government initiatives including SWAYAM, DIKSHA, PM eVidya, NDEAR and ePathshala. The analysis shows that digital infrastructure and enrolments have grown substantially, but benefits are concentrated among urban, better‑off and dominant‑group learners, while rural girls, tribal students, disabled learners and linguistic minorities face layered barriers of connectivity, affordability, skills, language and accessibility.

Building on Bourdieu, Sen, Bina Agarwal and Castells, the chapter proposes an original Educational Digital Justice Framework (EDJF) with six pillars—access, affordability, digital skills, inclusive content, ethical governance and AI readiness—to evaluate digital reforms in the AI era. It argues that the core policy challenge is no longer providing devices and platforms but institutionalising digital educational justice through universal broadband, equity‑centred digital‑literacy curricula, inclusive content ecosystems, rights‑based data and AI governance, and targeted support for historically marginalised groups.