Women Farmers Remain the Missing Link in India’s Digital Agriculture Push

India’s Union Budget 2026-27 made a significant push toward technology-led agriculture such as AI-driven advisory services, precision farming, satellite-enabled weather alerts, and data-driven yield analytics. This piece argues that its architecture systematically excludes the majority of women who work India’s land. Because agri-tech services, digital welfare schemes, and institutional databases are built on formal land records and registration systems, women who do not hold land titles (only 13 percent of women farmers hold land-asset ownership) are excluded from direct access to and control over the technologies.

Moreover, rural women have substantially lower rates of internet access than men, a gap that widens further among women belonging to marginalised castes and tribes. Most women in rural households do not have independent smartphone access, with devices controlled by male members. Digital literacy is yet another barrier. Field evidence from agri-tech start-up DeHaat found that fewer than one in five users of its advisory and insurance services were women, and that women’s participation in platform-related meetings remained limited even where access existed. Training sessions are inaccessible due to location, timing, domestic responsibilities, and the requirement for household permission to attend the sessions. The text argues that digital transformation cannot happen without a reckoning with gender, caste, and the structural conditions that determine who can participate in it.