India’s network readiness: strong pipes, uneven foundations

The latest edition of the Network Readiness Index (NRI) 2025 has reported that India has climbed four places to 45th position among 127 economies. This reflects that the country has made steady progress in digital infrastructure, connectivity, and technology adoption.

The index, released on 4 February 2026 by Washington-based Portulans Institute, assesses how prepared economies can leverage networked technologies across four pillars of Technology, People, Governance, and Impact—covering 53 indicators.

The report indicates that India has recorded a marginal improvement in its overall score, up from 53.63 in 2024 to 54.43 in 2025 (out of 100), signalling incremental but consistent progress. The improvement is driven by strong performances in several infrastructure- and economy-linked indicators.

The NRI also lists India at top in ICT services exports, Artificial Intelligence (AI) scientific publications, annual investment in telecommunications services, and e-commerce legislation, placing these indicators at the top end of the 127-economy distribution.

It also shows India among the highest-scoring economies on fibre-to-the-home and building subscriptions and international internet bandwidth, and strongly positioned on domestic market scale.

The index also notes that India’s network readiness exceeds what would typically be expected at its income level, ranking it second among lower-middle-income economies.

Uneven Readiness Profile Beneath Headline Gains

Interestingly, the data points to a widening imbalance in India’s readiness profile. While infrastructure scale and economic impact continue to become stronger, weaker performance on governance, institutional effectiveness, and citizen-centric outcomes limits convergence with the world’s leading digital economies.

The ranking highlights a contrasting picture that hints at a clear imbalance in approach. While India demonstrates credible strength in core digital capacity, such as international bandwidth, fibre penetration, and ICT-driven economic output, the report indicates that it continues to trail leading economies on governance, institutional trust, and citizen-facing digital outcomes.

The result is an asymmetric readiness profile: infrastructure and economic impact advancing faster than the frameworks needed to sustain inclusive, high-quality digital transformation.

Technology and Impact Pillars Drive India’s Gains

On the Technology pillar, India ranks 33, reflecting the country’s steady progress in foundational infrastructure. The country is identified as a high-performing economy on international internet bandwidth and fibre-to-the-home and building subscriptions, indicating strong backbone capacity and rapid fixed broadband expansion in urban and semi-urban centres.

In emerging technologies, the country also shows capability depth. AI scientific publications are flagged as one of India’s strongest indicators, underlining the scale of its research ecosystem and talent pipeline. While this does not automatically translate into commercial or societal outcomes, it reinforces India’s position as a significant global contributor to digital and AI knowledge production.

The country’s biggest strength, however, is the Impact pillar, where India ranks 42nd overall, supported by a standout 14th position in the Economy sub-pillar. India’s ICT services exports score at the top end of the global distribution, reflecting the continued dominance of its IT and digital services sector in global markets.

Reflecting on this, Amit Khanna, Partner and Lead – dGTL and AI at Grant Thornton Bharat, said, “India’s NRI 2025 ranking reflects strong momentum in technology and people pillars, driven by large-scale digital adoption across businesses and government. High international internet bandwidth, domestic market scale, and India’s growing AI research output underline this capability depth.”

This export-led digital success remains a defining feature of India’s network readiness profile.

Governance and Social Outcomes Remain Weak Links

Despite these strengths, India’s overall position is weighed down by its relatively lower ranking on the Governance pillar (73), which is its weakest among the four pillars. Most leading digital economies maintain consistently high scores on this pillar that captures regulatory effectiveness, trust, inclusion, and institutional capacity.

“While digital usage and economic impact are strong, governance remains India’s key constraint. Gaps in regulatory quality, trust, and inclusion—especially around privacy and data protection—continue to weigh on readiness, though recent DPDP developments may begin to address this,” Khanna said. 

The consequences of this imbalance are also visible in several other impact indicators. India ranks 106th in happiness, 104th in healthy life expectancy, and 112th in sustainable cities and communities, suggesting that digital capability has not yet translated into broad improvements in quality of life.

The NRI’s robustness analysis further notes that countries in the mid-rank range, including India, exhibit a wider confidence interval, with India’s ranking estimated between 41 and 57 depending on methodological variation. This underlines that marginal gains—or setbacks—in governance and inclusion could materially shift India’s global position.

What Separates Leaders from Rest of the Field Today

The top five economies in NRI 2025—United States, Finland, Singapore, Denmark, and Sweden—share a defining characteristic: balanced performance across all four pillars.

These countries combine advanced digital infrastructure with strong governance frameworks, high levels of trust, and measurable social outcomes. Their rankings are not driven by a single strength but by consistency—particularly in governance, where India’s gap is most pronounced.

While India’s technology indicators increasingly approach those of advanced economies, the absence of comparable governance performance prevents convergence at the top tier.

The comparison suggests that infrastructure scale alone is no longer sufficient to achieve frontier digital readiness.

Asia Comparison Highlights Governance-Led Gaps

Within Asia, the contrast is sharper. Singapore (rank 3), the Republic of Korea (rank 10), Japan (rank 11), and China (rank 24) outperform India, particularly on governance-related indicators.

Singapore’s Governance ranking of 15, Korea’s 20, and Japan’s 24 reflect institutional maturity and policy execution capacity that support advanced digital economies. China, despite structural constraints, ranks 50th on Governance, well ahead of India’s 73rd position.

This comparison places India closer to the Asian mid-pack rather than the region’s digital leaders, reinforcing that the readiness gap is less about access or adoption and more about governance, inclusion, and outcome delivery.

From Infrastructure Scale to Institutional Reform

India’s NRI 2025 performance indicates that the country has moved beyond the access phase of digital development. Core infrastructure is no longer the binding constraint. Instead, the next phase of readiness will depend on strengthening governance capacity, improving trust and inclusion, and ensuring that digital growth delivers measurable improvements in citizen outcomes.

The data suggests a clear inflection point. India’s digital economy already generates global value at scale, but sustaining long-term competitiveness, and closing the gap with leading economies, will require aligning institutional readiness with technological capability.

The image accompanying this story was created using AI. The article was edited with limited use of AI-based tool.

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