Authors - Ruhi Sethi, Sambhram Pattanayak, Prachi Trivedi Abstract - Despite substantial investments in India's digital governance infrastructure, the adoption of mobile governance in ICT services among rural citizens remains critically low. Existing literature treats trust as a monolithic construct and fails to distinguish trust in government institutions, digital platforms, intermediaries, and social trust. This conceptual paper proposes the Human Digital Trust Bridge framework which integrates multidimensional trust theory with three mediation mechanisms. These mechanisms include human intermediaries such as Common Service Centre operators, low technology interfaces like voice-based services and assisted kiosks, and social networks including peer influence. Synthesizing evidence from 50 studies published between 2020 and 2026 and contrasting the cases of UMANG success and Sanchar Saathi trust failure, the framework demonstrates that rural adoption of mobile governance in ICT is not driven by digital trust alone but is mediated through these bridges. The paper deconstructs trust into four distinct dimensions: institutional, technological, intermediary, and social. It shows how each dimension differentially affects rural and urban adoption. The framework yields testable propositions for empirical research and offers actionable policy implications for inclusive mobile governance in ICT design.
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