Smartpur was launched amid much celebration in Tain village of Haryana on May 16 in the presence of Finnish Ambassador Nina Vaskunlahi, Nokia VP & Head of India Market Sanjay Malik, Nokia Head of Marketing & Corporate Affairs Amit Marwah, DEF Founder-Director Osama Manzar and community members. Smartpur is a dream project for DEF and Nokia; it brings together 15 long years of learning of DEF to create a holistically designed smart village. In its pilot phase, Smartpur has been implemented in 20 villages. In the next one year, the plan is to scale up to 100 villages, and 500 in the next three.
While addressing the representatives from Nokia and DEF at the launch, Sarpanch of Tain Gram Panchayat asked for the establishment of a Digital University in Tain village where children can learn the latest skills.
Earlier in the month, a rally was conducted at one of the spoke centres, Akera, where 180 female students joined the rally with four teachers. They promoted Sarva Siksha Abhiyan and the importance of digital literacy in today’s time. Apart from this, a medical camp in Smartpur Tain was organised where free diagnosis of over 70 residents was carried out and medicines provided.
On May 20, in Sudaka spoke centre, team Smartpur set up a micro-ATM that turned out to be a blessing for 62 people as they received their pension in cash. This prevents them from traveling long roads and standing in long queues in the terrible hot weather, losing on a day’s wage. With a day, transaction worth Rs. 1.12 lakh had taken place through the ATM, proving to be beneficial for the banking service provider as well. Meanwhile, team Smartpur has also helped community members in being issued their resident certificates, backward class certificates and other necessary identity documents.
Having noticed Smartpur’s progress in Haryana, Minister of State for Railways and Minister of Communications Manoj Sinha was happy to expand the project in Ghazipur district in Uttar Pradesh, announcing the scope and objective of Smartpur in UP to a crowd of 40,000 during an open air meeting on May 27, 2018.