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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF EDUCATION, MODERN MANAGEMENT, APPLIED SCIENCE & SOCIAL SCIENCE (IJEMMASSS) [ Vol. 8 | No. 3 (I) | July-September, 2026 ]

Digital Welfare Gaps and the Social Work Imperative: A Conceptual Framework for Bridging the Digital Divide Among Marginalised Urban Communities in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu

Safiya R & Dr R. Kavitha

India's digital governance revolution, anchored in initiatives such as Digital India, Aadhaar-linked direct benefit transfers, and e-Shram, has fundamentally altered the landscape of welfare delivery. In rapidly industrialising cities like Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, this transformation is particularly visible: the city's textile and garment manufacturing sectors, home to thousands of informal and migrant workers, are increasingly expected to access welfare entitlements, labour protections, and public services through digital platforms for which many remain structurally unprepared. This paper is a conceptual study that critically examines the phenomenon of Digital Welfare Gaps (DWGs), defined as the structural discontinuities between policy-level digital mandates and the lived welfare realisation of marginalised citizens, through the lens of Social Work theory and practice. Drawing on secondary sources including census data, NSO/PLFS labour force surveys, Tamil Nadu government welfare digitisation reports, and published social work scholarship, the paper argues that digital exclusion in urban Coimbatore is not merely a technological deficit but a multidimensional social condition shaped by caste, class, gender, language, and occupational precarity. Theoretically, the study is anchored in Sen's Capability Approach, Social Exclusion Theory, and Structural Social Work (Mullaly & Dupré, 2018), all of which illuminate why market-driven digitisation, without deliberate equity interventions, reproduces and deepens existing social stratification. The paper introduces the Community-Centred Digital Inclusion Framework (CDIF), an original conceptual tool that positions social workers in Coimbatore's urban slums, garment worker hostels, and community service centres as Digital Welfare Navigators operating at micro, mezzo, and macro levels of practice. The paper concludes with context-specific policy recommendations tailored to the Coimbatore Municipal Corporation, Tamil Nadu's welfare administration infrastructure, and the University Grants Commission's social work curriculum mandates. It makes an original theoretical contribution by contextualising global digital divide discourse within a South Indian industrial city, offering a replicable model for similar Tier-2 manufacturing hubs across India.

Safiya, R. & Kavitha, R. (2026). Digital Welfare Gaps and the Social Work Imperative: A Conceptual Framework for Bridging the Digital Divide Among Marginalised Urban Communities in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu. International Journal of Education, Modern Management, Applied Science & Social Science, 08(03(I)), 83–89. https://doi.org/10.62823/IJEMMASSS/8.3(I).9228
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DOI:

Article DOI: 10.62823/IJEMMASSS/8.3(I).9228

DOI URL: https://doi.org/10.62823/IJEMMASSS/8.3(I).9228

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