Challenges on the Path to Smart Village Transformation: Identifying Barriers and Opportunities for Nagercoil, Tamil Nadu

In India, there are over 600,000 villages, majority of which are underdeveloped. According to India's 2011 Census, 68.84 % of the population lives in villages. As a nation's growth is punctuated by the development of rural communities, recognition of the challenges prevalent in the villages is a pre-requisite to transform them into “smart villages”. A smart village should be self-sufficient in energy, education, livelihood, water, sanitation, and technology. Hence, this research was intended to ascertain the challenges in Marungoor, a rural village in the state of Tamil Nadu, India. An ethnographic research approach was adopted for an in-depth study of the challenges. Despite numerous water resources, the researchers determined that the main problems in Marungoor were the shortage of safe drinkable water, poor waste management, and water bodies contaminated through untreated infiltration of sewage. An appropriate technological solution was proposed to address these challenges and transform the Marungoor community into a Smart village.