Made in Humane Club
Key highlights
- Upper-caste households lead in internet access, while Scheduled Tribes (STs) remain at the bottom—lagging 8 and 7 percentage points in rural and urban India, respectively.
- Optical fibre connectivity remains limited in rural India, yet upper-caste households are over 2.5 times more likely than SC and ST households to be connected.
- Infrastructure gaps leave 8 percent of ST households offline—nearly four times the rate of upper-caste households (2.1 percent)
In our previous analysis, we tapped into the Comprehensive Modular Survey on Telecom (CMS-T)— conducted by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) during its 80th Round (January–March 2025) under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI)—to reveal how rural India is twice as likely to be offline as urban India, and how high-speed fibre remains concentrated in cities. Yet, the same dataset hints at a deeper fault line running through India’s digital map: caste and tribe. Even when geography is held constant, internet access, its quality, and reasons for internet use—or non-use—differ across caste groups. In this second part, we trace how caste quietly, but decisively , shapes who truly benefits from India’s digital growth and who remains excluded from its promise.
Urban Advantage Exists, But Caste Deepens the Gap
All survey data classify respondents in terms of broad administrative categories created for implementing reservations or affirmative action. Thus, households are classified according to whether they belong to the Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST), Other Backward Classes (OBC), or the residual, designated as “Others”. This is the non-SC-ST-OBC population, which is a rough proxy for groups conventionally ranked higher in the socio-economic hierarchy, or the so-called “Upper Castes” (UC).
While geography carves out India’s broad digital divides, caste identity etches subtler but equally persistent lines. Across all caste groups, urban households report higher internet access than rural ones—but the size of that gap reveals deeper inequities.
Figure 1 shows that upper-caste households are leading India’s digital landscape, with home internet access reaching 94.5 percent in urban areas and 86.4 percent in rural areas. On the other end of the spectrum, ST households face the sharpest digital disadvantage across sectors. 78.4 percent of rural ST homes have internet access, and the rural-urban gap stands at 9 percentage points—the widest among all caste groups. While SCs have relatively low internet access, Figure 1 reveals that their rural-urban gap (5.6 percentage points) is the lowest among all groups, pointing to a uniformly constrained digital reach across both rural and urban areas.
Mobile coverage is widespread, but quality internet remains a caste privilege
Even in 2025, the quality of your internet connection in India can depend not just on where you live—but who you are. Beneath the surface of near-universal mobile coverage lies a complex and persistent digital hierarchy wherein high-speed, reliable internet remains disproportionately concentrated in upper-caste homes, leaving SC and ST households grappling with slower, less stable connections.
Figure 2 illustrates that in urban India, fibre internet reaches 1 in 5 upper-caste households (20.4 percent), but only 1 in 8 ST households (12.8 percent) and 1 in 14 SC households (7.1 percent). This means an urban upper-caste household is nearly three times more likely to have fibre connectivity than an SC household and about 1.6 times more likely than an ST household. In rural areas, optical fibre connectivity is scarce across the board, yet upper-caste households (6.8 percent) remain over two-and-a-half times more likely to be connected than SC (2.5 percent) or ST (2.1 percent) households.
WiFi access tells a similar story. Figure 2 reveals, in urban India, nearly 3 in 10 upper-caste households (29.1 percent) have WiFi, which is more than double the rate of SC households (13.6 percent) and approximately 1.6 times higher than ST households (18.6 percent). In rural areas, WiFi reaches just 6 out of 100 SC households (6.1 percent) and about 7 out of 100 ST households (6.5 percent), less than half the penetration seen in upper-caste households (14.5 percent). While SC and ST households face comparable digital exclusion in rural areas, the divide widens in urban India, with SC households trailing STs by nearly five percentage points in both fibre and WiFi access.
Offline by Circumstance or Choice? Caste Decides the Difference
Figure 3 reveals that while the primary reasons for lacking internet access—such as a perceived lack of need or limited digital skills—appear consistent across caste groups, what they reveal is far from uniform. Among ST households, only 39.3 percent attribute their offline status to personal choice factors such as not needing the internet, or relying on someone else’s connection. This share gradually increases with caste status, surpassing 50 percent among offline upper-caste households. Meanwhile, digital unreadiness, cited by about one-third of households across all groups, ranks as the second most common barrier, highlighting that skill deficits remain a widespread constraint.
These personal and skill-related factors coexist with structural barriers, particularly for ST households. Infrastructure and access limitations—though less frequently reported overall— affect eight percent of ST households, nearly four times the rate among SC (2.8 percent) and upper-caste (2.1 percent) households. This disparity reflects the longstanding neglect of tribal regions, where weak or absent telecom infrastructure contributes to a digital divide rooted not just in choice, but also in structural exclusion. Furthermore, financial constraints weigh more heavily on ST households, compounding their digital disadvantage, with 3.6 percent citing affordability as a barrier—double the share of SC households (1.7 percent) and nearly four times that of upper caste (0.9 percent). Together, these patterns reveal a dual dynamic: while many non-ST households choose to remain offline based on preference, for ST households, being offline is less a choice and more a consequence of ongoing skill deficits and systemic barriers that limit their access.
The data leaves little room for doubt: India’s digital divide is no longer just a tale of cities and villages, but of privilege embedded deep within its social fabric. Caste doesn’t just influence who logs on—it shapes the speed, stability, and even the choice to connect. Closing this gap will take more than laying fibre or lowering data costs. It will mean confronting the inequities that the internet alone cannot erase. Until then, connectivity will remain a mirror—reflecting not a united network, but the hierarchies that have always defined access to opportunity.
To cite this analysis: Sneha Thomas (2025), “Unplugged and Unseen: The Caste Divide in Connected India” Centre for Economic Data and Analysis (CEDA), Ashoka University. Published on ceda.ashoka.edu.in
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