LEOs and the digital divide: Can this truss bridge hold?

India's digital divide demands affordable, inclusive solutions. LEO satellites offer promise, but cost, access, and integration hurdles persist

- BY PRATIMA HARIGUNANI

The Cambridge Dictionary explains the adjective 'Yawning' as something that describes a difference or amount that is extremely large and difficult to reduce. That should explain why the 'digital divide' is, so often, and so aptly, called a 'yawning gap'.

But maybe there is more to it. It is also a boring gap to go after that makes you yawn. After all, why should it matter if some people stay in the 'digital dark'? As long as our metro cities, deep-pocketed urbanites and smartphone-wielding teenagers are plugged in, everything is "ka-Ching".

Well, not exactly.

According to the ICRIER State of India Digital Economy Report 2024, India is the third-most digitalised country in the world, behind the US and China but ahead of the UK, Germany, and Japan. Yet, the report's framework has unravelled that even if India may be vastly digitalised, the average user is not. India ranks 12th among the G20 countries in terms of the level of digitalisation of the user.

It is not a well-lit map of digitalisation when many regions in India, especially rural ones, are still in the shadows. These lights-out regions dim a lot of our thunder of being a nation that boasts of having one of the world's top Internet user bases. The country is missing out on seeing much of all the market potential, all the factories, the entrepreneurs, the productivity, the GDP, and the spirit of equality, just because this divide stays like a black void.

INDIA AND THE DIGITAL DIVIDE VALLEY