and other urban services are important for higher social productivity and economic growth(Martens, 2012). The basic economic unit, the household, is also strengthened by enabling women to better meet the needs of the household(Worldbank, 2012; Garde, 2014). Thus, in order to create inclusive and sustainable development, cities must focus on improving public transport services and walkways, since that is mainly how most people, who do not use cars, are mobile there. This should also encourage men to become more sustainable in their travel behaviour and walk, cycle or use public transport more. When smart mobility services were introduced, experts and proponents of smart mobility services had opined that these services would be accessible to disadvantaged sections of the society, including women, and could potentially improve mobility of those sections by providing cheaper, faster and more available mobility (Shaheen et al., 2016). However, as global and Indian evidence suggests, smart mobility services have not fulfilled that promise. As mentioned earlier, women have lower access to financial instruments, resources, give more preference to safety, and often make non-work trips. Therefore, women do not find ride-sourcing attractive enough as these can cost more than public transport and/or paratransit modes. Access to smartphones and affinity for digital payment instru­ments are also low in women and the elderly. These factors directly impact access to smart mobility services by women and the elderly. These are preliminary conclusions based on an understanding of these services and Indian urban societies. However, to arrive at more accurate conclusions, studies have to focus more on finding out what is keeping women, elderly persons, and low-income groups from benefitting from these services. Thus, prima-facie, it appears that smart mobility services are widening the gender gap in urban mobility instead of closing it. Let us understand the other roadblocks that impact accessibility of these services. 2.4 Digital literacy A Swedish report(Trafikanalys, 2016) compiled trends in digitalisation and its effects on gender equality. It reported that, to begin with, technology and technical designing has a gender imbalance with more men involved in these processes. This means that there is insufficient capacity to understand the social conse­quences of these services, especially on women; or even user-friendliness for women, the elderly and other such user segments. Further, the report adds that if services are available only on smart devices, then it is working on the presumption that that those wishing to use them not only have the devices but also the know-how(also called 'digital literacy') to use them. This is not entirely true as women generally have lower incomes than men and have potentially higher impediments to using new technologies. Similar conditions exist for the elderly as well as people from low-income households. Roland Berger(2014) states that smart mobility services are targeted at the new generation of younger people who are more technology savvy, more educated, possess more disposable income, and want instant mobility services. A large percentage of the population does not fit in to this target group. Durand et al;(2022) did a review of twenty-five papers on digital inequality and transport services. They found that vulnerability to digitalisation in transport services exists along dimensions of age, income, education, ethnicity, gender and geographical region. The term 'digital divide' became popular in the nineties, in the USA, during a decade of surging growth of the internet and personal computers(Lupa Č , 2018). Although initially,'digital divide' referred to material access to technology, over time it has been agreed and widely accepted that having material access to technology does not mean that people benefit from what technology has to offer(Zhang, Zhao and Qiao, 2020). Smart cities and smart mobility depends on technology and digitalisation. Digitalisation promises to simplify mobility and provide more choices for mobility to people (Shaheen and Cohen, 2020), however, it is also true that lack of skills, limited knowledge in the use of smartphones and apps can lead to a real digital divide. (Durand et al, 2022) says that internet penetration can be misleading to professionals if considered on its own; it is also important to combine it with literary and numeri­cal skills. Using an example, the study shows that the Netherlands has the highest internet penetration rate in Europe(98 per cent) and is, with Sweden, a European country with the highest(87 per cent) use of the internet with smartphones(Statistics Netherlands, 2018). Yet, in the Netherlands, one in six people aged 16 or older have low numeracy and or literacy skills(Netherlands Court of Smart mobility in India from an equity perspective 7