After 100 smart cities in 2015, 132 smart villages in 2016

After a hundred smart cities this year, it could be 132 smart villages in the next financial year. The academia that has come together under the umbrella created by Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi has initiated the process of identifying the villages and designing workable solutions to develop these villages into smart communities. The project will get funding in the next fiscal year.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's concept of adarsh gram have been picked up by human resource development ministry. With IITs, including Madras, Bombay, Kanpur, Roorkee, Delhi, Guwahati and Kharagpur, having a rural technology action groups in place, the HRD ministry has asked institutions to adopt villages under PM's Unnat Bharat Abhiyan (UBA).

IIT Delhi has been picked up as the nodal agency for coordinating the project. 125 government funded institutions, including IITs, National Institute of Technology (NIT), Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), Indian Institute of Science Education and Research and Central Universities will be involved in the project.

"Cluster of villages will be chosen and developed with science and technology intervention. Ideas related to management skills at local level, skill development, perspective economic plan, language preservation and technological intervention will be coopted to make a smart village," said a member of the committee.

While IIT Delhi will be the nodal office and IIM Bangalore will be creating a network of institutions to roll out the plan, 10 institutions will work on 10 different aspects to address the concerns of the villages.

ICAR will be conducting study on issues of farmers, agriculture, animal husbandry and forestry. IIT Kanpur will address the issues of artisans, IIT Kharagpur will be working on water resources, IIT Gandhinagar on low cost houses, IIT Kanpur on academia and IIT Guwahati and Madras on Industry and medicines respectively.

NIT Suratkhal will work on sanitation and education and networking institutions will be managed by IIM Bangalore.

All institutions participating in the programme have initiated the process of identifying the villages. 132 villages have been identified for pilot projects by 16 institutions.

The HRD minister has also asked the committee to identify the villages on the lines of Prime Minister's Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojana. "The prime minister has appealed to MPs to adopt the village under the scheme. The minister has expressed her desire that the villages adopted by MPs under the scheme be made a part of the project," said a member of the committee.

The designs created by the committee will also work as a model for the villages that will be adopted by the parliamentarians under the scheme.

The committee will be submitting its report to the ministry of Rural Development. The budget for the project is likely to be allotted in the next fiscal year. "We are hoping to get some 500 crores in the first phase," informed a committee member.