Digital divide: TN model can fill EdTech boom's rural gap

In 2021, in a small village near Dindigul, Tamil Nadu, 14-year-old Priya, the daughter of a sugarcane farmer, climbed a neem tree daily, not out of whimsy, but in desperate pursuit of a usable 2G signal for her online classes. Her story briefly caught the internet’s attention, but it was merely one among millions. Despite the growth of India’s EdTech market to an estimated $4.3 billion by 2023 (IBEF), 75% of rural students remain without stable internet access, revealing a stark and persistent digital chasm. While private EdTech companies build AI-powered classrooms and pursue global expansion, children like Priya continue to rely on state-run television for basic learning, a contrast that underscores the widening inequality between India’s digital elites and its rural learners.

This inequality is not anecdotal; it is systemic. National data reflects an unforgiving divide. During the pandemic, 92% of urban private school students reportedly accessed EdTech resources, while just 18% of rural government school children could do the same (ASER, 2022). The costs are prohibitive for most rural households; urban families spend an average of Rs 1,200 per month on online education, an amount that 89% of rural families simply cannot afford (NITI Aayog, 2023). The infrastructure gap is even more severe. Two-thirds of rural schools lack functional computers (U-DISE, 2022), and fewer than 12% of Indian villages have consistent 4G coverage (TRAI, 2023). Despite these glaring statistics, national policy continues to double down on a “digital-first” narrative, investing over Rs 7,000 crore into schemes like PM eVIDYA while neglecting lower-tech, more accessible options such as community radio, offline hubs, or television-based education.

Amid this digital imbalance, Tamil Nadu’s Kalvi TV offers a rare model of grounded success. Launched in 2021, Kalvi TV delivers curriculum-aligned lessons to over 8.3 million students daily, making use of a technology that already exists in 92% of rural households: the humble television. This low-cost public broadcast system operates on a modest Rs 48 crore annual budget, merely 6% of the state's overall EdTech expenditure. Its lessons are designed in Tamil and English, offering linguistic inclusivity and preventing the marginalisation seen in the English-centric EdTech content elsewhere. The broadcast is supplemented with WhatsApp-based doubt-clearing groups and partnerships with NGOs such as Akshaya Patra to distribute television sets to underserved tribal communities.

The impact is measurable. According to UNICEF data from 2022, Tamil Nadu experienced only a 4% post-pandemic drop in reading proficiency among schoolchildren, half the national average decline of 8%. Kalvi’s success illustrates that “low-tech” does not mean low-impact. In fact, its pedagogical design leverages available infrastructure and linguistic relevance to deliver learning far more equitably than most app-based platforms, offering a rare example of successful collaboration between state institutions and civil society organisations, thereby democratizing access without commodifying education.

National policies, however, continue to display a persistent disconnect from these ground realities. There is an overreliance on the assumption that smartphone penetration equates to educational access. In states like Bihar, data from UNICEF shows that 67% of children must share a single family phone, making consistent learning nearly impossible. Moreover, EdTech content is overwhelmingly monolingual and inaccessible; a study by IIT Bombay in 2022 found that 80% of EdTech materials are available only in English, sidelining non-Hindi and non-English speaking students. Compounding the issue is the lack of teacher preparedness. Only 11% of rural educators have received any formal training in integrating EdTech tools into their teaching practices (NCERT, 2023). Ironically, even as the government pours resources into digitisation, its own Kendriya Vidyalayas have officially banned smartphones inside classrooms, highlighting the internal contradictions in policy implementation.

These challenges demand not just course correction, but a rethinking of the fundamental philosophy guiding India’s digital education push. A hybrid model, inspired by Tamil Nadu’s Kalvi TV, could offer a scalable and inclusive path forward. Utilising Doordarshan’s 1,400 broadcast transmitters to deliver educational content could instantly improve access for millions of students without smartphones or high-speed internet. Mandating that at least half of all EdTech content be created in regional languages, as envisioned by the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, would go a long way in improving comprehension and cultural relevance. Repurposing existing anganwadi centres and panchayat offices as offline learning hubs equipped with cached digital resources can bring technology to the doorstep of rural learners, without waiting for infrastructural utopias to materialise.

Ultimately, India must confront an uncomfortable but necessary question: is EdTech a tool for democratising education, or has it become yet another vehicle for deepening the country’s structural inequalities? So far, the evidence suggests the latter. The current model celebrates technological sophistication but neglects educational justice. Until a child in Dindigul learns as easily and meaningfully as one in Delhi or Bengaluru, the promise of digital transformation remains unfulfilled. It is not enough to innovate in laboratories and boardrooms; true transformation must begin where the need is greatest on the ground, in regional languages, on shared televisions, and within communities that have long been denied equal access to learning.

The success of Kalvi TV challenges the conventional wisdom of India’s EdTech visionaries and offers a compelling case for reversing the gaze. Perhaps the future of learning lies not in algorithmic personalisation and AI dashboards, but in the recognition that inclusive education starts with inclusion — not just of devices and data, but of language, context, and dignity.

Thakur is Professor and Dean at Vinayaka Mission’s School of Economics and Public Policy, Chennai