India’s digital revolution is incomplete until public systems become truly accessible for everyone

The first thing my cook brought into my house wasn’t a spice box or a rolling pin.

It was trust.

Like many domestic workers, she slowly began sharing fragments of her life between chopping vegetables and kneading dough. Stories of rising prices. School fees. Medical expenses. The kind of conversations that never begin with, “Can I tell you something?” They simply unfold over weeks.

One morning, she spoke about her husband.

Years ago, he had worked as a security guard for a private security agency. His duty was simple but important: ensuring employees, especially women working late shifts, reached home safely. He stayed with the company until the pandemic arrived. When offices emptied and work shifted home, security requirements shrank. Like thousands of others, he lost his job.

There was one consolation.

His Provident Fund.

Money deducted from his own salary. Money that legally belonged to him.

Except, for more than four years, he couldn’t access it.

They had tried. They had visited offices. They had asked acquaintances. They had waited.

Nothing moved.

When she asked if I could help, I assumed it would be a matter of logging into the portal.

I was wrong.

The Universal Account Number (UAN) wasn’t activated.

That was manageable.

The name didn’t match across records.

That too was solvable.

Documents were updated.

The correction request was submitted.

Now all that remained was one final employer approval.

And then…

Nothing.

The request simply sat there.

Days became weeks. Weeks became months.

The employer’s HR department wasn’t rejecting it.

They simply weren’t approving it.

Calls went unanswered.

Messages disappeared into silence.

There is a peculiar helplessness in modern bureaucracy.

Nobody says ‘No.’ They simply never say ‘Yes.’

Finally, my cook managed to reach someone in the office, not the HR executive but another employee who agreed to hand over the phone.

That is how I found myself speaking to the HR representative.

He was dismissive.

Uninterested.

Unmoved.

Explaining the situation changed nothing.

So I did something I never imagined I would.

I let him believe I was calling from the Provident Fund office.

The conversation changed instantly.

Suddenly there were explanations.

Technical problems.

OTP issues.

Server errors.

Basement network problems.

One excuse followed another.

At one point he mentioned an error code.

By then, I had spent enough time reading EPFO documentation to know exactly what that error meant: the OTP retry limit had been exhausted. It wasn’t a mysterious system failure. It simply required waiting before trying again.

The confidence with which I responded seemed to convince him even more that I was, in fact, an official.

The matter was escalated to his senior.

The senior was far less polite.

The conversation became hostile.

Abusive.

The language wasn’t merely rude. It carried the kind of insults that drag mothers, sisters and women into every sentence.

Something else struck me.

I reminded him that no woman deserved to be spoken to like this and that I intended to escalate both the misconduct and the unnecessary delay.

Whether it was the perceived authority, the possibility of escalation, or simply the realization that someone was finally holding them accountable, I cannot say.

But something changed.

The next morning, my cook arrived with a screenshot on her phone.

The employer had finally approved the request.

The claim had moved to the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO).

For the first time in years, the process was actually moving.

She thanked me repeatedly.

I smiled.

But the celebration felt strangely incomplete.

Because the more I thought about it, the more uncomfortable I became.

Why did any of this have to happen?

Why should accessing one’s own savings require someone who understands digital portals, government workflows, error codes, documentation, escalation paths, and office hierarchies?

We often celebrate technology for making services ‘digital.’

But digital is not the same as accessible.

A smartphone is not empowerment if you cannot understand the app.

An OTP is not security if the intended user doesn’t know why it isn’t arriving.

An online portal is not transparency if nobody explains what each status actually means.

Technology has undoubtedly reduced paperwork.

But it has also created invisible barriers.

The educated don’t notice them because we cross them instinctively.

Activate the account.

Verify the identity.

Link the PAN.

Correct the name.

Generate the OTP.

Upload the document.

Track the request.

Escalate online.

Simple.

Unless you’ve never done any of those things before.

For millions of workers, digital governance has replaced long queues with invisible ones.

The queue is now inside an application.

Inside an error message.

Inside an employer’s pending approval.

Inside an unanswered phone call.

We often speak about the digital divide as though it is about internet access.

It isn’t.

It is about confidence.

Language.

Knowledge.

Institutional power.

The HR executive ignored a worker.

He did not ignore someone he believed represented the system.

That difference should trouble all of us.

My cook believed I had done something extraordinary.

I hadn’t.

I had simply possessed something she did not: the confidence to navigate institutions.

No citizen should need someone else’s education, language, social confidence, or perceived authority to access money that already belongs to them.

We often ask whether India is becoming more digital.

Perhaps the more important question is this:

Is India becoming more accessible?

Until the answer is yes, technology will remain efficient for the privileged and exhausting for everyone else.