We welcome you to join us in the Five Journeys or Verticals of the Smart Village Movement that address the unique needs and unleash the potential of rural populations creating a more equitable world.
Agriculture
SVM projects focus on building an ecosystem that emphasizes the farmer. We enhance the existing knowledge systems, bring in modern farming technology, improve market linkages and ensure standardization, quality, and fair trade.
Education
We explore and facilitate partnerships to empower the existing state-run education system to make it more robust through various tech and non-tech innovations. The objective is to bridge the gap in Professional Education by creating Digital Education curriculum and courses catering to the needs and aspirations of rural youth.
Healthcare
The increased use of new-age solutions will help establish working systems for positive healthcare management, telemedicine and a comprehensive and sustainable way to reduce the disease management burden and deliver timely and quality healthcare to rural areas.
Household
SVM brings new ideas and processes to indigenous technologies. We honor and enhance traditional wisdom that is widely accepted by generations of village communities but introduce resources and initiatives focused on affordable housing, water, energy, connectivity, transportation, and sanitation improving their experience of Livelihood.
Entrepreneurship
SVM brings rural entrepreneurs training and access to digital tools to support them in their entrepreneurship journey. From knowledge and skills training, access to finance, market linkages, SVM provides rural businesses an entire roadmap that helps them transact around the world and puts them on the road to organic growth and profitability in a sustainable manner.
Our Work - A Promise of Empowerment
We aim to create sustainable livelihood, healthcare, and education opportunities in rural India so villagers do not need to relocate to crowded cities to thrive. Innovating in the rural setting evolves organically and takes time. Smart Village Movement is an ecosystem founded on Open-Innovation and Co-Innovation approach to solve socio-economic pain points. Our village communities engage in creating value for others and capture some of that value for themselves in the form of income. SVM facilitates learning, agri-trade, healthcare and entrepreneurship opportunities, thus making our villages more attractive places to live in. This, in turn, enhances the happiness index of rural populations.
Smart Village Movement Initiatives in Agriculture
SVM projects focus on building an ecosystem that emphasizes the farmer. We enhance the existing knowledge systems, bring in modern farming technology, improve market linkages and ensure standardization, quality, and fair trade.
- Urgent need for education on modern farming techniques, the introduction of advanced technology, the necessity of ecosystem approach, and rural-urban linkages need to be realized to overcome drastic challenges in this vertical. The majority of farmers are presently using the obsolete knowledge of fellow farmers or ancestors to educate themselves on farming practices. Education offered by the Government is limited to only 25 percent of the farmers.
- Sustainable agriculture and food security in India are facing a major threat today. High rates of soil erosion because of indiscriminate and excess use of fertilizers, insecticides, and pesticides have depleted the quality of productive soil over the years.
- Improper use of inorganic fertilizers and inefficient irrigation practices have resulted in deterioration of soil fertility. A major population of the farmers has raised their concerns over the involved risk and low return from farming and have turned to other professions for self-sustainability.
- After harvest, farmers struggle to exchange their produce for a fair monetary income. Middle man exploitation, low market prices, and inaccessible markets prevents farmers from increasing their overall benefit. In addition, the village’s lack of cold storage facilities means a large share of what farmers produce ultimately goes to waste. Urgent need for education on modern farming techniques, the introduction of advanced technology, the necessity of ecosystem approach, and rural-urban linkages need to be realized to overcome drastic challenges in this vertical.
Smart Village Initiatives in Agriculture
The Agriculture vertical aims to bridge the gap between farmer’s capacity and their final output through the ecosystem approach. Our growing list of partner companies is involved in adding value to each part of the farmer journey, from Agri-Advisory to Market Linkages. With technologically forward solutions and farmgate activities, SVM projects are looking towards an ecosystem that emphasizes the farmer. The focus is to enhance the existing systems and ensure standardization, quality, and fair trade. While India’s crop diversity is abundant, strategic marketing and on-ground efforts are lacking. This forms a barrier for companies that want to work in the field. We are looking forward to furthering the state’s agricultural potential through projects such as locally-run Farmer Development Centers that offer farmer’s knowledge resources and market linkages.
Smart Village Movement Initiatives in Education
We explore and facilitate partnerships to empower the existing state-run education system to make it more robust through various tech and non-tech innovations. The objective is to bridge the gap in Professional Education by creating Digital Education curriculum and courses catering to the needs and aspirations of rural youth.
- At the primary education level, there is a lack of engagement, support and limitations in school facilities in ensuring that every child in school is engaged in their learning and learning well at appropriate grade level. The results of the 2018 ASER study show that enrollment, attendance, level of reading and math achievement in kids ages 6-14 are not to standard.
- There are no higher education institutions within village proximity. Young adults who wish to pursue careers in medicine, engineering, law, or technology must emigrate to cities and spend hours traveling to attend colleges. This emphasizes the imbalance in opportunities between rural and urban areas.
- A major challenge for rural youth is the requirement to be able to speak English in order to enter into professional education programs. However, instruction for children in most rural state-funded public schools is not conducted in English. English language fluency has become a barrier to entry to higher education and the workplace.
Smart Village Initiatives in Education
Education plays a critical role in emerging economies for sustainable growth. The SVM Education vertical explores and facilitates partnerships to empower the existing state-run education system to make it more robust through various tech and non-tech innovations. In an initiative under Smart Village Movement Meghalaya, Salesforce and Sauramandala Foundation has set up Trailblazer Labs for children and youth in remote areas. The labs are co-designed with The Open Door Project and project DEFY enabling learning in children with hands-on activity and aims to teach every child a skill. These innovation hubs are powered by clean solar energy through HYGGE. Each lab has multiple components like libraries for all ages and groups, maker-spaces for youth and budding entrepreneurs, and computer labs for accessing free content provided by our tech partners and the IOTs. Curiosity Gym was also brought on to teach children 3D printing and Robotics. SVM engages and trains grassroots leaders across SVM areas of operation – entrepreneurs who can create local ownership and sustainable growth independent of SVM. Smart Village Movement has also partnered with relevant organisations like IBM, Recykal, NavGurukul and Save Foundation for a rural-centric approach to create the Smart Village Centre for Professional Development & Smart Village Academy. The objective is to bridge the gap in Professional Education by creating Digital Education curriculum and courses catering to the needs and aspirations of rural youth. Companies in the SVM ecosystem would have the opportunity to offer courses through the SVM platforms.
Smart Village Movement Initiatives in Healthcare
The increased use of new-age solutions will help establish working systems for positive healthcare management, telemedicine and a comprehensive and sustainable way to reduce the disease management burden and deliver timely and quality healthcare to rural areas.
- India lags far behind in the health benchmarks set by the World Health Organization. A majority of the surveyed audiences from our pilot program tend to be dissatisfied with the existing infrastructure and services.
- There is an extreme imbalance in the availability of resources between rural and urban areas. Rural India has little to no access to quality services at primary healthcare centers and essential medicines, vaccines or specialised care.
- Affordability is still a major concern, with every 2 of 3 persons reporting it to be unaffordable and too expensive.
- A vast majority of the Indian population is unable to take proactive and preventive healthcare measures to prevent chronic disease and disability.
Smart Village Initiatives in Healthcare
One of the critical trajectories for SVM is to help villages reduce time and costs for fostering healthy and productive citizens. India has one of the highest spendings in the world when it comes to healthcare with individual expenditure at almost 70%. Access is limited to the densely concentrated facilities and workforce in the urban areas which makes it difficult for both individuals and institutions. Smart Villages use cutting-edge technologies (AI, blockchain, medical drones, digital dispensaries/ telehealth clinics, radiology on wheels, etc.) which helps reduce some of these constraints of physical resources, timeliness, and affordability. SVM is also launching a Positive Population Management (PPM) Initiative that will open access to preventive healthcare measures for rural communities.
Our Berkeley-curated healthcare ecosystem model connects the sector’s different components to multiple startups and companies for different value proposition offerings. The model works together with SVM to help leverage shared capital and operational resources using open innovation, co-innovation, and other collaborative engagements.
We envision a shift of high-quality healthcare for remote areas all over India. The increased use of new-age solutions will help establish working systems for positive healthcare management, a comprehensive and sustainable way to reduce the disease management burden.
Smart Village Movement Initiatives in Household
SVM brings new ideas and processes to indigenous technologies. We honor and enhance traditional wisdom that is widely accepted by generations of village communities but introduce resources and initiatives focused on affordable housing, water, energy, connectivity, transportation, and sanitation improving their experience of Livelihood.
- On one hand, part of India is making a huge leap in implementing the finest of technologies like Blockchain in the electricity transmission sector, but yet there are millions of rural homes without a grid connection or access to clean energy.
- Access to clean water is uncertain and often undependable. Even in the State of Meghalaya which has one of the heaviest rainfalls in the world, due to lack of rainwater harvesting technologies, the dry season brings on severe water shortages.
- Only every 1 out of 10 villagers has a wired internet connection which therefore increases the dependency on mobile internet providers. However, bad connectivity and slow speed internet are the major problems, and inconsistency of the internet and low bandwidth act as another roadblock for users of mobile internet services.
- Sanitation and water availability play a critical role in achieving a better livelihood. Therefore, existing water resources need to be used sustainably while the quality of water is to be kept at safe standards. Water quality is in turn, dependent on how industry, agriculture, and public disposes of waste, which are major sources of water pollution.
- Financial Inclusion is essential for providing the poor a central platform in order to save money and earn interest. India bears low financial and digital literacy, cash shortages, and issues with transferring welfare benefits among underserved populations. Banking serves as a channel to access formal loans to avoid the dependency of resorting to informal moneylenders and paying unfair interest rates. Also, other financial services such as pensions, insurances, and funds from welfare programs can be directly accessed.
- A combination of growth, urbanization, and the embrace of consumer capitalism spurred a growth in disposable goods consumption and limited India’s capacity for waste handling. Despite India having a long history of frugality and recycling, called the ‘Kabaadi’ tradition- the advent of the large availability of disposable goods to consume, broke this cultural value. The other critical factor for the waste crisis in India is its caste system, preventing intrinsic waste management from the population itself.
- Lastly, poor road quality and under-funded existing road maintenance leads to the deterioration of roads, congestion due to high traffic demand across certain regions and unavailability of proper public transportation are causing serious problems in terms of an efficient and safe transportation system that connects the rural Indians to the rest of urban India.
Smart Village Initiatives in Household
SVM’s focus is on affordable housing, water, energy, connectivity, transportation, and sanitation in the Household vertical. The companies in this ecosystem help us address the various vertical points like lack of weather-resistant houses, water resource management, poor internet connectivity in select areas, lack of access to clean fuel, unreliable electricity supply, poor waste management practices, etc. Meghalaya is one of the world’s wettest regions, yet households do not directly access water during the lean season.
The Household ecosystem companies provide durable and affordable, climate-resistant, and self-sustainable houses with integrated facilities like solar, biogas, kitchen garden, rainwater harvesting, and electric mobility. These value propositions help achieve the larger SVM goal of improving the quality and standard of living in our communities and making them truly smart. We are currently looking to connect with more companies, entrepreneurs, and academicians to participate, collaborate and address some of these pain points.
Smart Village Movement Initiatives in Entrepreneurship
SVM brings rural entrepreneurs training and access to digital tools to support them in their entrepreneurship journey. From knowledge and skills training, access to finance, market linkages, SVM provides rural businesses an entire roadmap that helps them transact around the world and puts them on the road to organic growth and profitability in a sustainable manner.
- No direct relationship between sustained investment and economic growth when it fails to provide adequate employment for all able and productive citizens/villagers.
- With lack of business opportunities at home in the village, many people with the most potential to improve life in the village are leaving. Migration to other major cities and the Middle East has been steadily increasing since the past 4 decades.
- Lack of basic education, healthcare and sanitation facilities make potential entrepreneurs, doctors, engineers or teachers unwilling to settle in villages.
- Lack of access to digital technologies make it harder to gain knowledge, skills and access to national & global markets for village entrepreneurs.
- Agriculture- once the major employer of village communities now sees diminishing returns with farmers seeing very little benefit, hence younger generations choose not to continue the family farming tradition and seek employment in manual labor in urban areas instead, sometimes living in even worse conditions.
Smart Village Intiatives for Entrepreneurship
- Taking into consideration all the facts mentioned above, a program to foster rural entrepreneurship was urgently needed. A village accelerator program called Prarambham meaning “startup” in the Telugu language, was initiated by SVM in Andhra Pradesh to generate rural entrepreneurs in an effective and sustainable way. Some of the lucrative areas for developing entrepreneurial talent in rural areas through training and digital platforms are : Handloom Enterprises | Handicraft | Waste Management | Healthcare | Water Management | Tourism | Horticulture | Transport
- Increasing awareness through connectivity leads to empowerment of all, especially women and deprived sections of society. In developing countries like India, it is only through providing employment and making our villages more attractive places to live in that we will be able to enhance the happiness index of rural populations and reverse the drift of populations from villages to our overcrowded cities.
- Scaling technology solutions to a large number of villages, which are located in different areas come with challenges due to diverse cultures, demographics, and needs. Meeting the stated objectives will not require substantial infrastructure development or large outlays of money. Rather, it will require uninterrupted Internet connectivity, community engagement, and skill-building. With these resources, villagers can identify and pursue entrepreneurial paths to economic freedom.
Entrepreneur’s Journey under Smart Village Movement by
Prof Solomon Darwin, Berkeley Haas, Garwood Centre