New Delhi: India has built the world’s largest biometric identity programme, pioneered digital public infrastructure that countries across the globe now study, and cemented its reputation as an IT powerhouse. Yet for millions of citizens, the online face of the state is still frustrating. Applying for a visa, booking a train ticket, filing taxes or downloading a certificate can feel less like using a modern public service and more like fighting your way through a maze of broken links, endless redirects and outdated verification tools.
The Economist recently put the spotlight on this contradiction, describing many Indian government websites as “hostile” to users. From cluttered layouts and broken links to outdated CAPTCHAs and endless redirects, the magazine said many portals are a “sadistic mix of pop-ups, moving text, flashing graphics” that make even routine tasks unnecessarily frustrating.
The criticism may be fresh, but the problem isn’t. For years, researchers, accessibility advocates and even government audits have pointed to the same shortcomings: websites that are difficult to navigate, inaccessible for persons with disabilities, poorly maintained and built with the bureaucracy, not the citizen, in mind.
One of the earliest red flags came in a 2016 audit of central government websites, which found that only 31 of 957 portals complied with the government’s own Guidelines for Indian Government Websites (GIGW). The findings suggested that despite the Centre’s growing push towards e-governance, quality and usability remained afterthoughts.
Accessibility has remained another persistent concern. The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) has repeatedly highlighted that many government websites continue to fall short of internationally accepted Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), creating barriers for persons with disabilities. Academic studies evaluating dozens of Indian e-governance portals have similarly found recurring problems with navigation, accessibility and overall usability.
The bigger issue, however, may not be design but governance.
Paper processes turned digital
According to The Economist, India’s digital bureaucracy has traditionally sought to “reproduce paper processes in digital form rather than rethinking them altogether.” In other words, many websites simply replicate offline procedures instead of redesigning public services around how citizens actually use them. The publication notes that user experience, or UX, found its way into official government website guidelines only in 2023.
That institutional mindset extends to how government technology is built. Many ministries rely on the National Informatics Centre (NIC), the government’s in-house technology arm, to develop and maintain websites. But when projects become more complex, they are frequently outsourced to private vendors. While outsourcing brings technical expertise, critics argue it has also created a knowledge gap within government itself. The Economist quotes Susan Thomas of Mumbai-based think tank XKDR, who argues that governments often outsource both strategy and execution, leaving officials without the expertise to understand or improve the systems they purchase. The result, she says, is “a costly, unmanageable liability.”
Procurement practices add another layer to the problem. Risk-averse bureaucracies often prefer the lowest bidder or lean heavily on big consulting firms for cover, because following procedure is safer than taking a chance on better design. The incentive is to avoid blame, not to deliver a service that feels intuitive, fast and accessible.
Ironically, India has already shown that another model is possible. Aadhaar, arguably the country’s most successful digital public project, succeeded not only because of its technological ambition but because of its leadership. Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani was given cabinet-rank authority, allowing him to recruit specialised talent, iterate quickly and take calculated risks—an approach many experts say has not been replicated across the wider digital bureaucracy.
The contrast matters because government websites are no longer a side issue. As welfare, taxation, education, healthcare and other citizen services move online, a bad interface can mean a failed payment, a missed deadline, a blocked application or hours wasted trying to complete a basic task. The cost is not just inconvenience. It is exclusion.
India has demonstrated that it can build digital infrastructure at unprecedented scale. The harder challenge may be building digital services that are just as thoughtfully designed as the technology powering them.
(Edited by Janaki Pande)