SMART VILLAGES:

INCREASING TECHNOLOGY REACH

TO NARROW THE CONNECT
BETWEEN RURAL AND URBAN INDIA
Smart Village:
• A smart village is an implementation of the
ideal village through use of modern
techniques and technologies.

• A smart village provides its inhabitants with

all the basic facilities in an efficient manner.

• In a smart village, the community,

individually and collectively, will be
empowered to take smart decisions using
smart technologies and with the support of
smart manpower and by managing to be
self-sufficient.
How to identify a Smart Village?
• There have been various studies that
describe the necessary amenities in a
smart village.

• The decision to determine on the type of

facilities or amenities necessary for a smart
village is quite critical.

• Facilities and amenities (or lack thereof) in a village, along with its
demographic and geographic attributes help in the determination of a
village that can be considered as an ideal candidate for being converted into
an ‘Smart Village’.

• Needs an intense evaluation based on the opinion of the direct stakeholders

and expert community.
Who are the Stakeholders?
Before the formal plan formulation starts, there has to be systematic
environment creation and social mobilization. In this evaluation process the
key stakeholders will be:

• Villagers
• Village heads/reps
• District heads/reps
• NGOs heads/reps
• State govt. agencies heads/reps
• Central govt. agencies heads/reps
What DATA to collect?
• First create a baseline/bench-mark of facilities and amenities, and next to
create a record of perception amongst the various community stakeholders.

• Following are the area where data needs to be collected to successfully

evaluate and quantify accordingly for implementing smart village policies.

Infrastructure:
Habitations without road, length of road, irrigated/unirrigated, type of irrigation etc.

Social development:
From the public identify the major problem they are facing as a village and try to
identify and list out specific causes to each issue. For example, sanitation, healthcare,
education etc.
What DATA to collect?...
Economic development:
From the village economy, one should identify the major challenges, deprivation that
they are facing economically. For example: difficulty in selling organic agriculture
produce, indigenous products access to Offline/Online Markets. .

Human Development:
All the hindrances needs to be identified such as not completing minimum level of
education, malnourishments etc.

Ecology and Environment:

Reports to study the sustainable use of resources such as water, soil health etc.

Governance:
Identification of ineffectiveness in decision making, corruption in Gram Panchayats etc.
What DATA to collect?...
• Once the situational analysis is completed, a comprehensive plan on implementation
of the actions should be prepared.
• A tracking sheet to be used to monitor the effectiveness of the implementation. There
will be two sheets which needs to be filled.
• The template is made using PDCA where the Sheet provides a summary of all areas of
work with responsible authority and target date. An example is being listed out in the
table:

Summary of all areas of work

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Pr
io
Department/ Completion time/ rit
SNO Area Work Sector How? Strategy/Plan Responsibility Budget ( if any ) Target Date y
1
2
3
How to collect and track data?

Parameters that determine a smart village

How to collect and track data?

Methodology
Data Collection
Prepare different questionnaire for different respondent groups.
Village Representatives
Will contain questions which is intended to gauge the performance of a village on the basis of
certain indicators of the above described parameters.

a. 1 or 2 team members to interview the village representative (Pradhan, Up-Pradhan, Panchayat

Secretary, Ward Panch, etc.)

b. Include certain subjective questions on those parameters, for whom no such quantifiable
indicators could be recognised

2. Village Residents
This questionnaire had 4 different parts, each of which will serve a unique purpose.
• Select the villages from different blocks of village

• Team members in groups of 1 or 2 will interview the residents of the village, in order to collect
their opinions
Data Collection…
Part 1: Villagers will be asked to rate the 25 parameters on a scale of 1 to 5 (Likert-scale) on the
basis of current situations of these parameters in their respective villages.

Part 2: Villagers will be asked to provide weights (or importance) to the parameters on a scale of 1
to 5.

Part 3: Villagers will be asked to answer a total of five questions, for indicators which can neither be
found in Census data nor can be estimated by representative.

Part 4: Will contain certain qualitative questions on certain topics. The purpose of these questions
will be to ensure that we do not miss out on any important parameters.

3. Interested Representatives (NGO heads/reps etc.)

Will contain similar questions like that for village representatives which is intended to gauge the
performance of a village on the basis of certain indicators of the above described parameters.
Data formalization/interpretation
Formalization
The collected data will be pre-processed so as to generate correct results
a. On values of weights for each data for parameters collected from stakeholders
b. On Values of parameters for each data for parameters collected from stakeholders
c. Reliability factor: If a considerable number of indicators for a given parameter could be verified
by using the Census records, the reliability factor for that parameter for all the villages is assigned a
value of ‘1’

If the current situation scores for a parameter of a village given by the village residents do not
agree much with the scores obtained using the representative data for the same parameter of the
same village, then the reliability factor is assigned a value of less than ‘1’ (precisely depending on
the difference of the two scores).

Interpretation
The pre-processed data will be then analyzed so as to draw appropriate conclusions.
How do I make the identified village ‘SMART’?
Technology’s reach (or lack thereof) in rural India
Despite many impressive leaps in the education and technology sector and the attention it is
receiving from recent government policies, a lot remains to be accomplished in expanding its reach
into rural India. In terms of access to quality education, there is a massive gap between rural and
urban India which requires immediate attention. This directly (and exponentially) translates into
lack of productivity, development and therefore keeps extending the divide more and more.

The penetration of mobile phones and other connected devices generate huge amount of
structured and un-structured data every day.
How do I make the identified village ‘SMART’?...
Productivity in rural India is extremely low due to unscientific farming practices, fragmented land
holdings, lack of agro-climatic focus for crops selection, lack of access to the right farming advice at
the right time. While focus has been on improving farm production, reducing food supply-chain
losses remains a relatively unaddressed problem.

The rise of the middle class has also raised the expectations of citizens and businesses for higher
standards of service as well as greater transparency and access to government leaders, policies,
and operations.
G
overnment is leveraging on technology to expand public and private financial networks in rural
areas. Integration of information and services for citizens facilitates internal governance as well as
transparency of government through external access.
Thank You