This article showcases digital inequalities that came to the forefront for online learning during the COVID-19 lockdown across five developing countries, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Afghanistan. Large sections of population in developing economies have limited access to basic digital services; this, in turn, restricts how digital media are being used in everyday lives. A digital divide framework encompassing three analytical perspectives, structure, cultural practices and agency, has been developed. Each perspective is influenced by five constructs, communities, time, location, social context and sites of practice. Community relates to gendered expectations, time refers to the lockdown period while locations are interleaved online classrooms and home spaces. Societal contexts influence aspects of online learning and how students engage within practice sites. We find structural issues are due to lack of digital media access and supporting services; further that female students are more often placed lower in the digital divide access scale. Cultural practices indicate gendered discriminatory rules, with female students reporting more stress due to added household responsibilities. This impacts learner agency and poses challenges for students in meaningfully maximising their learning outcomes. Our framework can inform policy-makers to plan initiatives for bridging digital divide and set up equitable gendered learning policies.

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The article explores the lived realities of socio-political negotiations by marginalized groups and the inherent rationality of caste-based power negotiations at a micro level. It also explores the possibilities of alternate futures and alternate interpretations of the margins, through the study of caste-based negotiations and subversions in the Khap villages of western Uttar Pradesh. Stuart Hall, British Cultural theorist, draws attention to the perspective that cultural identification need not produce an essence but a positioning subject to the continuous ‘play’ of history, culture and power. B. R. Ambedkar had termed the hierarchical caste system in India as ‘graded inequality’, which resists any transformation in its oppressive framework because it gives a sense of superiority to each caste placed above the other in a descending order. Despite stiff resistance to any transformation, various forms of subversion—denting the rigid caste and cultural frames—exist in the Khap areas of western Uttar Pradesh. Ambedkar’s vision of a non-sectarian equitable new social order in combination with empirical study on the current socio-political negotiations by marginalized groups on the ground—with a hint to the possibilities of alternate futures through the efforts towards inducing a democratic environment—are explored here.

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This study explores digital divide issues that influenced online learning activities during the COVID-19 lockdown in five developing countries in South Asia. A multi-layered and interpretive analytical lens guided by three interrelated perspectives—structure, cultural practices, and agency—revealed various nuanced aspects across location-based (i.e., rural vs. urban) and across gendered (i.e., male vs. female) student groups. A key message that emerged from our investigation was the subtle ways in which the digital divide is experienced, specifically by female students and by students from rural backgrounds. Female students face more structural and cultural impositions than male students, which restricts them from fully availing digital learning opportunities. Rich empirical evidence shows these impositions are further exacerbated at times of crisis, leading to a lack of learning (agency) for women. This research has provided a gendered and regional outlook on digital discriminations and other inequalities that came to the forefront during the COVID-19 lockdown. This study is especially relevant as online learning is being touted as the next step in digitization; therefore, it can inform educational policymaking and help build inclusive digital societies and bridge current gender and regional divisions.

Kashmir in the popular imagination is seen through the lens of excessively securitized and state-centric narratives that cast a shadow over the struggles of everyday life in Kashmir. An overriding climate of conflict, natural disasters, untimely snowfall and loss of tourism (one of the mainstays of Kashmir’s economy) have phenomenally shrunk people’s choices. Weak state institutions have induced a feeling of alienation among the Kashmiri people. This qualitative study attempts to look beyond the meta-narratives of conflict and brings out micro narratives of people’s lived experiences in a turmoil zone, radiating both at the inter-generational and intra-generational level, which is eclipsed in Kashmir.