Smart Village India gets its foundation from Mahatma Gandhi's vision of Adarsh Gram (model

village) and Gram Swaraj (Village self-rule/independence).[1][4][3] Gandhi in two texts, Hind

Swaraj[3] and Gram (Village) Swaraj, promotes the concept of integrated rural development to
impact majority of the population, as the primary initiative after India Independence in 1947.[1][4]
[3][11]
 The Eco Needs Foundation has initiated the concept of "Smart Village". Under this project
the Foundation is adopting villages and putting efforts for sustainable development by providing
basic amenities like sanitation, safe drinking water, internal road, tree plantation, water
conservation. The Foundation is also working for inculcating moral values in the society and
for improving the standard of living of the villagers. In the concept of "Smart Village" the
development of the village shall be based on the five paths Retrofitting, Redevelopment,
Green fields, e-Pan, Livelihood. Under the concept of Smart Village, the Foundation has
adopted Village Dhanora, Teh. Bari, District Dholpur, a small and remote village of Rajasthan to
develop it as India’s First Smart Village. The village is situated 30 km away from Dholpur
district head quarter and 248 km from Jaipur. The population of the village is about 2,000. The
village was devoid of its basic needs like sanitation, internal roads. It was also facing various
other similar problems such as lack of access to potable water, non-availability of water
conservation system, encroachment on the roads, power fluctuation, non-availability of
employment oriented education, unemployment and poverty, so on and so forth. Prof.
Priyanand Agale Founder of Eco Needs Foundation and Dr. Satyapal Sing Meena (IRS) Joint
commissioner of Income Tax has converted this idea into reality and now Dhanora has become
role model of Rural Development. Dhanora village was also given an award by Prime minister of
India Mr. Narendra Modi in the year 2018. [12][13][14][15][16][17][18]

In a way, Mahatma Gandhi conceptualized smart villages.

A champion of participatory democracy and grassroots development, he believed that making

villages self-contained and sustainable was the first step towards empowering India. Contrary
to popular belief, he wasn’t against industrialization, markets and competition as long as they did
not lead to the passive or active exploitation of villagers.

Yet, seven decades after independence, we are nowhere close to realizing Gandhi’s vision of
empowered villages. Rural India remains in a deplorable state.

One reason for this is institutional neglect.

Headquarters of malnourishment

A glaring example is Harisal, a small village in Amravati district in the western Indian state of
Maharashtra.
During my first fieldwork in this village, I learned that telephone lines and mobiles didn’t work
here, infant mortality rates were alarmingly high, finding meaningful employment was
impossible, school dropouts were the norm, and avenues for learning skills non-existent.

In fact, soon after taking charge in October 2014, chief minister Devendra Fadnavis even
referred to Harisal as the "headquarters of malnourishment". Harisal was far from being one of
the Narendra Modi-led central government’s smart villages.

Being a passionate skeptic of blanket monolithic solutions, my vision for smart villages is for
them to emerge as a cluster of connected communities, each having a distinct sense of style,
purpose and being.

For me, Harisal will be smart when a handloom weaver near the Melghat Tiger Reserve begins
her day by powering her mobile internet through “White-Fi” (technology that leverages
unutilized spectrum owned by television channels to provide low-cost internet connectivity),
discovers business opportunities using a customer relationship management app, and partners
with payment gateways, e-commerce firms, and rural transport services to provide finished
garments from Mumbai to Jammu.

So, over the past year, the Maharashtra government and Microsoft have collaborated to develop a
strategic framework for smart village adoption and to identify an impact-driven, public-private
partnership-enabled implementation model to transform Harisal into India’s first smart village.

Working as a multistakeholder team, we began by recognizing that building a smart village was
more of an anthropological problem than a technological one.

Although it is too early to celebrate success, the feedback from villagers has been encouraging.

We now have a better understanding of the core elements of a smart village and hope the
framework is widely used by the government, private players, and non-profit organizations.
Interventions must be pivoted around three core pillars: ensuring last mile access, providing
technology infrastructure, and fostering a sustainable ecosystem.

Last mile access

Mobile networks still don’t operate in Harisal but the village now has internet. “White-fi”
technology is being used to deliver broadband internet. Villagers now use Skype and WhatsApp
to connect with the wider world. Encouraging alternate technologies and new business models
designed for scale must be the first step towards the digital transformation of our villages.

Technology infrastructure

It is no secret that India missed reaping the benefits of the first, second and third industrial
revolutions. Now the fourth is upon us. It would witness the fusion of physical, biological, and
digital worlds with the mainstreaming of technologies such as 3D printing, artificial intelligence
and machine learning.

According to the World Economic Forum, almost 90% of the world’s data was created in the last
two years. Going forward, the pace will only increase. With this data explosion, cloud
technology will be instrumental in shaping disruptions and redefining customer
experiences, innovation methodologies, and governance models, not only for urban India
but also for “Bharat.”

Smart villages must be data-driven and cloud-powered. District collectors – the Indian
Administrative Service officers in charge – should consider re-skilling block development
officers (implementers of rural schemes) in basic data collection and analysis so that they
monitor education, healthcare, agriculture, and financial inclusion metrics. Progress on
these metrics must be shared with the chief minister’s office, local administration, and villagers.
This would ensure transparency of goals and outcomes.

Let us take healthcare as an example. Infant mortality rates are alarming in Harisal. Last year,
in April and May, 158 children under the age of one perished. Given the acute shortage of
doctors – one for a population of 11,000 – tele-medicine and tele-consultation are necessary but
not sufficient to transform healthcare. Even though we have engaged leading doctors from
nearby cities, long-term success will be contingent upon regular data collection, monitoring, and
analysis.

Cataract is another common occurrence in the region. Considering constraints of income and
distance to the nearest treatment centre, it is vital to build up predictive capabilities using
advanced analytics – again premised on data.

Similar arguments can be advanced for education where building a digital classroom will help
but not until learning outcomes are measured and students’ progress tracked.

Ecosystem

Developing an economically viable and culturally sensitive ecosystem in villages is of

paramount importance. Unfortunately, direct access to the market has been a major challenge
largely due to multiple intermediaries and lack of skilled workforce. Even Amravati, well-known
for its garments, gets almost 7,000 weavers from Bengal every season to fill the local labour gap.

To counter this challenge, a three-pronged strategy will be useful: provide training that
supplements indigenous skills, ensure digital and IT-readiness, and link skilling-interventions to
market – both online and offline.

Almost 70% of India lives in villages where the social and economic conditions are sub-optimal.
The country has often been touted as an emerging superpower even though most Indians remain
super poor. This is why empowering villages through technology and creating rural innovation
clusters will be critical to reconcile India’s “super power-super poor” conundrum and realize the
true potential of Digital India.

The soul of India lives in its villages - Mahatma Gandhi

Government of India, under the energetic, committed & innovative leadership of Prime
Minister Narendra Modi, is working on Smart cities & Smart Villages program, which is
good initiative.

65% of India’s population lives in its villages. The youth from villages have been migrating to
cities in search of work as there are no or less opportunities for employment in villages. They
leave a good quality life of village for a poor quality of life in cities. This leads to slums &
poor hygienic conditions of life for them in cities. We need to stop this migration from villages
to cities. For this we need to create work opportunities in villages & make villages SMART for
our citizens.

During the Mentor On Road drive to 35 states & 35 cities in USA, driving 20,000+ kms in 82
days, Jagat Shah, the mentor met 1500+ Indian American diaspora and presented to them “New
India 4.0” which included a project of smart villages. The approach is to motivate Indian
diaspora living abroad to adopt their home villages in India to be then converted into a smart
village in 1000 days. How to do this ?

First we prepare & submit a secondary research report on the “As is situation” of the
village on 70 parameters of village benchmark:

Based on this report, we expect the village adopter from abroad to give us three days of their
time whenever they visit India. During these three days, in their presence, we will conduct a
primary survey of village children, youth, middle aged men & women and elderly people in the
village to find out their PAIN POINTS in the village which they wish to change. This is done
through separate questionnaires which we have prepared for each category of people, in different
languages. These surveys are conducted by school and college children, along with the teachers
living in & around the village. This interview exercise is practical learning for the children /
youth who conduct these interviews and in every problem of the society, lies a business model.
So it Is expected that some of these youth will start a business to solve the pain points of the
village, thereby creating employment in village itself.

We want the overseas adopter of village to be present during the primary survey so that they can
first hand feel the pain points of the village. Besides, we expect the overseas adopter of village to
suggest technology based solutions to the pain points and we look forward to their knowledge,
experience, talent, networks, access & experience of technology.

Based on the pain points identified, we devise an action plan to solve them, one by one through a
smart village manager whom we hire in the village, a person ( He / She who lives in the village ).
Those pain points are solved first which majority of village calls as a pain point. This way it is a
bottom - up approach to village development.

The big question Is where does the money come from?

We tap resources of private & public sector corporate social responsibility ( CSR ) funding,
overseas development agency funding, personal social responsibility ( PSR ), Moral Social
Responsibility ( MSR ) funds, funds from central government, state government, municipal
corporation, panchayat & MLA / MP funds. Besides a start up fund from the adopter.

Every three months the activities are monitored for impact assessment.

We are glad to share that so far 62 villages, all over India in 19 states, have been adopted by
Indian origin Americans living in USA, and we have submitted the secondary research reports
for 48 of these villages and 14 village adopters have visited their villages from USA & work has
started.

We are now appointing Smart Village Ambassadors who will contribute to the cause as their
Moral Social Responsibility ( MSR ) towards nation building !