Digital India Programme and School Education in India: A Review of Policy Initiatives and Emerging Literature

Abstract

 The Digital India Programme, launched by the Government of India in July 2015, has significantly expanded digital infrastructure, e-governance and digital literacy across the country, and the school education sector has been an explicit focus of several of its initiatives. This paper reviews the Programme's education-facing components at the national level (DIKSHA, the National Digital Library, and the Pradhan Mantri Gramin Digital Saksharta Abhiyan) and at the state level in Rajasthan (SMILE, Shiksha Vani and Shikshadarshan), and situates these policy developments within the wider academic literature on the digital divide and Internet use in school settings. Drawing on digital divide theory and empirical studies of school-based Internet access, the paper argues that while Digital India has made impressive gains in physical and administrative digital infrastructure, the literature consistently shows that infrastructure access alone does not resolve the deeper social, linguistic and pedagogical disparities that shape how children actually use digital technology for learning. The paper concludes by identifying gaps that need to be addressed for digital education policy to translate infrastructural gains into equitable learning outcomes.