New Delhi, June 5: The National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), in partnership with The Quantum Hub (TQH) and supported by the Women in Digital Economy Network (WiDEN), today launched The Evolving Landscape of Digital Inclusion Report. Drawing on the latest round of the India Human Development Survey (IHDS-3) conducted between 2022 and 2024, covering 47,473 households and 212,607 individuals across nearly every state and union territory, the report offers one of the most comprehensive nationally representative pictures yet of how digital technologies are actually used in Indian homes. This report is a part of the India’s Transformation Series of publications launched by NCAER.

The report headlines that India’s next digital challenge is no longer connectivity, but meaningful participation. While India’s internet user base has witnessed remarkable growth in the last few years, the depth and quality of digital engagement remain starkly uneven. Without intervention, digital transformation risks reproducing, rather than reducing, India’s existing social and economic inequalities. The report links household-level access with individual-level use across gender, social groups, class, age, and geography, offering key stakeholders a granular evidence base on how digital technologies are embedded within India’s social fabric, and where the deepest gaps lie.

“NCAER has always worked to generate rigorous, independent evidence on the transformations shaping India’s growth and social progress,” said Professor Sonalde Desai, Centre Director and Professor, NCAER National Data Innovation Centre.“This report extends that purpose to one of the defining shifts of our time, offering policymakers, regulators, and industry a clear, nationally representative view of where digital inclusion is working, where it is failing, and who risks being left behind. With AI revolution sweeping the global productivity landscape, a grounded reality check is needed to ensure that India’s next generation is ready to embrace new frontiers of productivity..”

The key findings from the report are:

• Mobile access is near-universal, but advanced device ownership is deeply unequal. 95.1% of households own a mobile device, but only 8% own a computer – and the richest quintile is nearly twenty times more likely to own a computer than the poorest.

• India’s internet is mobile-first, and over a quarter of households remain offline. 71.4% of households connect via mobile, while 27.5% have no internet access at all, rising to 52.1% in the poorest quintile.

• The gender divide is the most persistent axis of digital inequality. Among working-age adults, 57.6% of men use the internet compared to just 35.6% of women – and the female-to-male ratio narrows but does not close as economic status rises.

• A hidden divide in digital skills underlies these patterns. 1 in 5 households needs help from outside the household to access digital services, rising to nearly 1 in 3 among households with no education.

• Digital inequality is being inherited across generations. Only 37.8% of children aged 13–16 use the internet, with use rising from 30.2% among children of unschooled mothers to 52.7% among those whose mothers completed higher secondary education.

• The elderly face sharp exclusion. Only 9.4% of individuals aged 60 and above use the internet, raising urgent concerns as welfare delivery moves online.

• Among connected households, use is dominated by entertainment, not opportunity. 66% use the internet to watch movies, serials, or news, but only 16.1% for online learning and 11.4% for government services.

“This collaboration pairs NCAER’s analytical depth with the policy lens needed to translate evidence into action,”said Aparajita Bharti, Co-founder, The Quantum Hub. “The data is clear: connectivity alone does not translate into capability. India’s next phase of digital policy must focus as much on functional skills, vernacular design, and closing the gender gap as it has on rolling out infrastructure.”

As India builds the next phase of its digital economy, the report makes the case that success can no longer be measured only by the number of online users, but by whether digital technologies translate into real opportunities in learning, livelihoods, and access to public services for every section of society.