International conference on smart villages gets under way at SASTRA

A two-day International Conference connected “Smart Villages and Rural Development (COSVARD 2025)” bringing unneurotic researchers, academicians, policymakers, and practitioners to deliberate connected pathways for sustainable and inclusive agrarian improvement commenced astatine SASTRA, a deemed university, present connected December 15.

The conference, held successful hybrid mode, is jointly organised by the University of Melbourne and SASTRA Deemed University, focusing connected the need-based smart, community-centric improvement models of the agrarian villages, starring to the clime affirmative outcomes. The league peculiarly emphasised connected the request for maintaining the urban-rural equilibrium alternatively than closing the existent spread of urban-rural divide, for sustaining the planet.

In his opening address, the Founding Chair of COSVARD and module subordinate astatine the University of Melbourne, Hemanta Doloi, outlined the imaginativeness and maturation of the COSVARD initiative. Claiming that probe and argumentation attraction continues to beryllium disproportionately urban-centric, helium said that sustaining agrarian regions was captious for gathering planetary sustainability and clime goals.

He highlighted the value of balanced improvement that recognises the needs and imaginable of the agrarian population.

Delivering the main impermanent address, Vice-Chancellor, Gandhigram Rural University, N. Panchanatham, emphasised empowering agrarian communities with digital, IoT, and ICT skills to beforehand astute villages and incorporate migration to cities. He said lessons from agrarian sustainable surviving practices could connection solutions to emerging municipality sustainability challenges.

The league features keynote lectures and method sessions connected agrarian infrastructure, sustainability, astute governance, and integer connectivity, reinforcing COSVARD’s relation arsenic a planetary level for advancing astute and sustainable agrarian development, according to a SASTRA property release.