By Devendra Kumar
In the shadows of New Delhi’s gleaming technology corridors lie ‘jhuggi,’ or makeshift shacks, clusters where childhood is rarely about play. It is about survival. Hunger teaches faster than schoolbooks. Responsibility arrives before adolescence. Dreams shrink before they are even articulated.
This was not a story I witnessed from the outside. It was my childhood.
I was abandoned at age 2. My 3-day-old sister and I were left to navigate a world that had little patience for children without protection. In the slums, you do not grow up. You simply age. By the time I was 8, I was selling balloons at traffic signals in Delhi. Education was not a right. It was a privilege reserved for others.
Eventually, poverty forced me to leave school in Class 11. My sister dropped out after Class 6. In most cases, that would have been the end of the story. Generational poverty would have tightened its grip. Informal labor would have become destiny.
Today, as founder of the Ladli Foundation, I work to ensure that India’s nearly 250 million students, particularly girls who are often the first to be withdrawn from opportunity, are not locked out of the future by a screen they were never taught to use.
The Digital Wall
In 2022, India introduced the Common University Entrance Test, known as CUET. It was designed as an equalizer, a single examination for entry into central universities. In principle, it was progressive. In practice, it exposed a deeper fault line.
By 2025, computer-based testing became the standard. For students in elite private schools in cities such as Delhi and Mumbai, navigating a digital interface is routine. For millions in government schools who have spent 12 years writing with pen and paper and have never handled a keyboard, the examination format itself becomes an obstacle.
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These students are not failing because they lack intelligence. They are failing because they were never taught the digital language of the exam.
The divide is structural
According to UDISE+ 2021-22 data, less than half of India’s schools reported having computer facilities, and internet access remains significantly lower. The gap is sharper when comparing private and government institutions. Infrastructure inequality is no longer just about classrooms or textbooks. It is about connectivity.
When opportunity migrates online, exclusion becomes invisible. It hides behind dashboards and data portals. But for the child who cannot log in, it is immediate and devastating.
Digital exclusion is not merely an education issue. It is an economic barrier.
The Hard Reality
India positions itself as a global technology powerhouse. Yet, the lived reality for millions of students contradicts this image. When examinations, scholarship forms, skill certifications and job applications move online, digital illiteracy becomes a silent disqualifier.
This is not about gadgets. It is about access to citizenship in a digital economy.
When a student cannot navigate a computer interface, the disadvantage compounds. Competitive exams become intimidating. Application errors increase. Confidence erodes. Eventually, aspiration adjusts downward.
We must acknowledge a simple truth. The digital divide is not about capacity. It is about exposure.
Ladli’s Intervention
Ladli Foundation began addressing this divide by establishing seven computer labs in underserved communities. At that time, the urgency was not widely recognized. Digital literacy was still seen as supplementary.
It is no longer supplementary. It is foundational.
In 2021, we partnered with the BYJU’S Education for All initiative to provide free, technology-enabled learning to 100,000 underprivileged children across 26 states through Project E-Pathanshala. The objective was not merely to distribute tablets. It was to create confidence with technology.
The results were tangible. In states such as Bihar, Manipur and Madhya Pradesh, first-generation learners demonstrated measurable improvement in academic engagement through digital content. Children of daily wage workers and domestic helpers began solving complex math problems on tablets. They explored science simulations they had never imagined.
The estimated impact value of the initiative reached approximately ₹600 crore, or about $72 million. But the true measure of impact was psychological. Students who once hesitated to touch a keyboard began teaching others.
That is how empowerment spreads.
From charity to systemic reform
By 2025, we recognized that isolated interventions were insufficient. Device distribution without institutional infrastructure risks becoming symbolic.
The real challenge lies inside government schools, where millions of children spend their formative years.
In partnership with the American India Foundation, we set an ambitious goal to establish 100 advanced computer labs in government schools equipped with interactive flat panel displays and high-speed connectivity. These were not meant to be ornamental installations. They were designed as active learning hubs.
Policy environment also began shifting
In the 2025-26 Delhi budget, ₹19,291 crore was allocated to education, marking a 17 percent increase. Of this, ₹100 crore was earmarked specifically for digital infrastructure, including the conversion of 7,000 classrooms into smart classrooms.
On Feb. 10, 2026, we launched 100 advanced computer labs in collaboration with the Delhi government and the American India Foundation. The milestone signaled more than program expansion. It demonstrated alignment between civil society and governance.
Systemic change requires scale. Scale requires policy. Policy requires political will.
Why the girl child matters
The name ‘Ladli,’ meaning beloved daughter, is deliberate.
In low-income households, when financial pressure mounts, the girl child is often the first to withdraw from school. When a family owns a single smartphone, it is frequently reserved for the son’s education. Domestic responsibilities are assigned to the daughter.
Digital access within school infrastructure neutralizes this inequality.
When a computer lab exists inside a government school, the gatekeeping shifts. Girls gain equal time, equal exposure and equal confidence. During our technology-enabled learning interventions, nearly 60 percent of beneficiaries were girls. Many expressed interest in STEM subjects for the first time.
Access reshapes imagination.
A movement for dignity
My journey from child laborer to social entrepreneur, recognized by the United Nations and nominated for the Padma Shri, is often described as inspirational. I see it differently.
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It is evidence of what happens when access intersects with potential.
The digital divide is not a reflection of intellectual deficit. It is a reflection of systemic neglect. When we establish a functional computer lab in a government school, we are not installing machines. We are restoring dignity.
We are telling a child that the future is navigable.
Digital India must reach the last mile
India’s Digital India vision cannot be realized solely through corporate campuses in Gurgaon or technology parks in Bengaluru. It must be validated in a government classroom in North Delhi, in a rural district in Bihar, in a tribal belt in Madhya Pradesh.
It must be visible when a girl logs into the CUET portal without fear.
In 2026, digital literacy is no longer optional. It is central to economic mobility, academic competitiveness and democratic participation.
If we fail to address this divide, we risk creating a two-speed nation, one fluent in code, the other excluded by it.
Because a child’s destiny should never be determined by whether she had the chance to learn how to click a mouse.
It should be determined by her talent, her effort and her right to belong in the digital age.
(Devendra Kumar is the founder of Ladli Foundation Trust and a grassroots social reformer who rose from extreme poverty to lead major initiatives in gender equality, education, and public health, impacting over 2.5 million people. A two-time national award recipient, his work has been recognized by successive Presidents of India and acknowledged at the United Nations. He also founded Ladli Foundation USA, a registered nonprofit in the United States.)