Covid 19 pandemic and the consequent closure of educational institutes for a long period of time have drastically altered the learning practices across the globe. In a developing country like India, a large section of people has limited access to digital services. Online education without addressing huge access gap and disparities in digital infrastructure, particularly in a developing country like India, exacerbates the existing digital divide in educational opportunities. Against this backdrop, the paper attempts to investigate can online education be inclusive and equitable? The results highlight the equity issues and challenges in online learning faced from the perspective of students during the Covid 19 lockdown period wherein educational institutes across the world moved to remote learning. This study is a qualitative enquiry employing twenty in-depth interviews with the students enrolled in a public University. Only the students of the Faculty of Arts are purposively selected for the study. Overall, the study reveals how the pandemic has disproportionally impacted the students in terms of gender, class and regions. The findings of the study will help in bridging the gap in online education as it indicates that online education is the best alternative in adverse situations. The study aims to examine the intricacies of digital divide and suggest that the governments, policy makers, educators and various stakeholders need to invest more resources in educational sector and develop interventions for specific disadvantaged students to promote digital inclusion.
