Rural areas are home to the vast majority of Indians. Most Indian rural villages struggle with various challenges to accelerate rural development. They lack basic health care, education, and other infrastructure facilities. Rural India experiences the impact of global warming and climate change affecting the social and economic life of the people. Tripura, a tiny state in Northeast India, is also no exception to this. As per the census data of 2011, 73.83% of its population lives in rural villages. Like most rural villages in India, the rural villages in Tripura also face similar problems and challenges. It aims to transform rural villages into viable growth centres. The concept of a Smart Village can be a useful perspective to address the major rural problems in India. In the current study two rural villages-Punsari Smart Village located in Sabarkanta district of Gujarat, and Chantail Village, a non-smart village of Unokoti district in Tripura are taken up in order to understand the development dynamics in the smart and non-smart villages of rural India. Current study is basedon a survey conducted from June to September 2022 with 20 villagers from each ward of Chantail village of Unakoti District. To conduct the research , field observation and semi-structured interview methods were used during the survey to collect first-hand information. This study aims to reveal that in terms of providing services to the residents of villages, Chantail village is lagging far behind the Punsari smart village. This is largely due to the absence of a smart village concept in Tripura. Moreover, this paper is attempt to draw the attention of the policy makers of Tripura for sustainably accelerating rural development by focusing on the vitality of smart village
