Indian villages moving along the IT stream using mobile apps for rural development is a reality now. ‘Smart’ is part of their lexicon now, with each letter denoting new aspirations: ‘S’ for social security schemes, ‘M’ for modern urban amenities, ‘A’ for adoption of smart agriculture practices, ‘R’ for roads infrastructure and transportation and ‘T’ for tech-savvy, and the smartphone is helping bridge the rural-urban divide. Due to it, mobile apps are acting as platforms for social and behavioral changes among the rural population. Be it agriculture, health, education or availing any government services, mobile apps have touched almost every aspect of rural development and continue to be the harbringer of change in rural India.
In Uttar Pradesh, two IT professionals, with a dream to transform the lives of thousands in rural India, have developed an app called ‘SmartGaon’, that not only connects an entire village population internally and with the developed world, but also serves as a knowledge and information centre, a marketplace, a helpline and a holistic development tool to make their village a smart village. Yogesh Sahu, a Mumbai-based young entrepreneur delivering IT solutions to small and medium businesses, along with his friend Rajnish Bajpai, a software professional working abroad, had together envisaged creating a transformation in rural India, using mobile technology and Internet of Things.
