Working hard with smartness empowers people and communities towards sustainable development.

Accessing and using technologies in the respective work make a person smart. Several technologies developed in recent times are already being adopted by the farmers in rural areas. In a smart village, people use technologies, do networking, use communication technologies and are innovative. The smart and hard-working farmers have a better chance to reduce their vulnerabilities in the present scenario.

With increased smartphones usage and access to cheap broadband internet connectivity, there are many possibilities for smart monitoring and management of things. The people have access to information and are also able to communicate across.

Especially in the farming sector, the factors and the associated uncertainties are more. The decision making is based on controlled and uncontrolled factors. The monitoring systems are becoming cheaper and reliable. The Big-Data processing for decision making is becoming a huge task. Where the Artificial Intelligence (AI) based on the empirical data, learning models and belief systems should be developed. Although initially, the decision support systems could be discrete, over a period there is a need to integrate the systems for aggregate decision making.

Monitoring is possible through the use of sensors like the drinking water sources and quality; water storage levels in the reservoirs; monitoring the water usage per family. The communities should adopt the rainwater water harvesting systems, and other conservation, recycle and reuse systems.

Using sensors some of the important aspects which could be monitored are: Soil moisture; Water level in the fields; water level in the borewells, water flows in the canals and channels, water drainage; and water quality.

The farmers could adopt low-cost soil moisture sensors in their fields. The sensors installed at various depths would make the farmers understand the fluctuations in moisture levels. The farmers would manage the irrigation and drainage based on the information received from the sensors. The data could also be received on mobile phones too.

Canal automation and irrigation scheduling based on monitoring data are other aspects need to be adopted for achieving irrigation efficiency. Piped water should be supplied up to the individual fields, which should be metered to monitor the usage.

To increase the irrigation potential, the solar-powered motor pumps for the bore-wells. The remote and most deserving poorer communities could access the off-grid solar power and improve their livelihoods.

Automatic Weather Stations enabled with WiFi, give continuous information on the local weather. The farmers by understanding, especially the temperature and relative humidity could manage their crops better. The evapotranspiration rate is a very good indicator for irrigation planning. With the availability of the local weather data, they could go for the index based insurance from the Government and other agencies. Also, they could better manage their crops and do irrigation scheduling.

Understanding spatial resources help in efficient decision making. In this context could use the imageries available from various sources. Drones could be used for monitoring and management of resources. Drones fitted with cameras enable one to access spatial and temporal information for the management of crops and water use efficiency. The local school children and teachers could be trained in flying the drones. The farmers could plan the harvesting and other management practices based on the observations made from the images. Solar powered 360 degrees IP cameras fitted to the Balloon kites (Kytoon / Helikite), are ideal for continuous monitoring of the resources. At least 4 or 5 such balloon kites could be deployed in a village to cover an extent about 500 to 1000 acres. The people could also monitor the movement of people and animals in their fields all the time. With the infrared cameras, the wild grazing animals entering into the fields could also be identified.

Advisory services to the farmers based on the pictures/video/audio/text files could be provided over the mobile phone. The farmers could manage their agriculture. This would accelerate the facilitation services provided to the farmers by the experts. Using artificial intelligence the predictions could also be facilitated.

Smart application for the mobile phones developed would enable farmers to register their category of produce, quantity and their expected price and get the right price for their produce. The farmers can know agriculture commodities rates live through web streaming of agriculture markets or from agriculture market information network.

The villagers could interact with line department officials through video conferencing facilities at the community centres. They could also access the e-services for utility.

The local health workers could facilitate the tele-medicine services to the deserving people, especially women, children and old people. The mobile phone based applications would help in data capture and support in providing such services. For example, the low-cost mobile phone enabled ECGs are useful for the monitoring of heart patients.

Usage of local materials in construction, creating energy efficient habitats, functional houses and creation of low-cost houses will make a village smart.

Creating energy efficient cold storage rooms, with smart internal environment control systems, smart space allocation systems for the types of goods and also establishing smart pest management systems.

Replacing the conventional power systems with decentralized power options such as solar power, wind power, micro-hydel power. Adopting energy efficient technologies.

Management of waste materials (solid/liquid), and promoting reuse and recycling concepts.

e-conferencing halls for meetings and participation to be created in each village.

The communities are enabled to do business online for their produce. The packaging and disposal networks are established. Selling the produce in the field, that is in advance and selling to the client directly through supply networks.

e-portal for jobs and services - skilled, semi-skilled, artisans, ploughing, cutting, trashing, etc. Also posting the demand for services.

Monitoring transportation facilities. Requesting transportation facility as per the demand for the selling the produce and fetching the inputs.

Digital education to the farmers and other professional communities in the villages is necessary. Learning is a continuous process, especially wherein agriculture the information is constantly changing. The digital content developed in the local language and dialect facilitates many to learn and get updated with the technologies and practices. With access to increased internet bandwidth, the content is cheaper and easily accessible. The children and youth in the villages could enroll in the e-learning courses for learning.

The secondary schools in the villages could be used as hubs for smart technologies. The children should be trained on certain basic equipment assembling and maintenance as part of education. The science teacher supported by a full-time technician should manage the systems established. Each hub in a village should be networked with regional hubs and other hubs.

This farmer next to a forest land, used three steel plates attached to a long thread, in the night when a wild browsing animal enters into the field, the steel plates make a loud sound, the animals move away from the field. Animals are also becoming smarter to live, with the experience they are avoiding them.