Paper Details

Name: Theertha Prasad K
Country: India

Year: 2025
Volume: Volume No: 12, Issue No: 2, Year: 2025 (Special Issue)
Page Number: 189-200
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17898365

ABSTRACT
India has undertaken a transformative digital journey, leveraging its layered digital public
infrastructure, known as the India Stack, to achieve major progress in Digital Financial
Inclusion (DFI). This infrastructure, which includes foundational elements like identity and
instant retail payments (UPI), has lowered the costs of identification and transactions at a
massive scale. National policies, such as the Pradhan Mantri Jan-Dhan Yojana (PMJDY),
have catalyzed widespread financial access.
Concurrently, the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 has institutionalized technology use
and inclusive financing mechanisms to advance the goal of education equity. The study
analyzes the crucial intersection where digital finance mediates the entire education financing
lifecycle, encompassing application, verification, disbursement, and payment. Digital tools
facilitate the seamless disbursement of scholarships via Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) and
reduce friction in fee payments through integrated platforms like Bharat BillPay.
Furthermore, efforts like the VidyaLakshmi portal and credit guarantee schemes (CGFSEL)
aim to expand access to education credit and bridge financing gaps for higher education.
However, the research identifies that persistent inequalities across gender, geography, and
income threaten to undermine these gains. Significant challenges remain in translating basic
account ownership into meaningful usage, particularly among women, resulting in account
inactivity. Furthermore, uneven device ownership and connectivity, as documented in
national surveys, sustain a digital divide that affects remote and low-income households.
The paper concludes that achieving genuine education equity requires policy interventions
that move beyond mere access. Key recommendations emphasize coordinating digital
infrastructure with financial protection, including scaling integrated digital and financial
literacy programs, utilizing purpose-bound digital transfers such as e-RUPI vouchers for leakproof scholarship delivery, and implementing infrastructure models (like KFON) to close the
critical last-mile connectivity and device gap for vulnerable segments.
Keywords:
Digital Financial Inclusion (DFI), Education Equity, India Stack, Direct Benefit Transfer
(DBT), Unified Payments Interface (UPI), Gender and Rural Divide