While there is growing talk of smart cities in conversations on global development, a majority of people in emerging market economies live in villages.
This is leading some to ask: what about smart villages?
In India, where about 70 percent of the population lives in villages, Prime Minister Narendra Modi followed his smart cities campaign with a smart villages campaign, to address suboptimal conditions and to provide people with reasons to stay, rather than move to the cities. As they build smart cities, governments and their partners — from the world of technology to the global development community — tend to overlook villages. But India offers a model of how to pursue both plans.