Most of India`s people live in villages. Most Indian villagers are concentrated in heavily forested areas that combine inaccessibility with limited political or economic significance. Indian city dwellers often refer nostalgically to "living a simple village life," but the Indian villages, are mostly regarded as just a few underdeveloped areas, which have quite a less access to the outside urban world. These villages are yet struggling to transform themselves, into full-fledged urban settlements. Although these settlements look very sleepy, they are infact actually humming with a lot of agricultural activites. The work ethic is strong, with little time out for relaxation, except for numerous divinely sanctioned festivals and rite-of-passage celebrations. Yet unfortunately, these villages are mostly classified as "backward areas in need of development".
 From a distance, an Indian village may appear deceptively simple. The Indian villagers also share the use of common village facilities - the village pond (known in India as a tank), grazing grounds, temples and shrines, cremation grounds, schools, sitting spaces under large shade trees, wells, and wastelands. Even the village fields surround the settlement and are generally within easy walking distance. The sight of villagers slowly coming or going, oxcarts creaking, cattle lowing, and birds singing--all present an image of harmonious simplicity.
Even a typical Indian village is a collection of mud-and-straw dwellings. These homes are generally small, consisting of one or two rooms with mud floors. Wealthier families live in  brick or concrete houses. There are also some clusters of mud-plastered walls shaded by a few trees, set among a stretch of green or dun-colored fields. Some villages have thatched huts or tile-roofed stone and brick houses, where most are nucleated settlements, while others are more dispersed, with small lanes for passage of people and sometimes carts.
The commonly known activities of most of the villagers have always been, subsistence agriculture or hunting and gathering. Most villagers are farmers who work in nearby fields. In India, the women work planting the rice paddy, while the men work pulling bullock carts, tilling new soil. Though men and women work similar hours, men earn more than the women. Most villagers own few possessions. These belongings typically include brass  pots for cooking and clay pots for carrying water and storing grain. Village people cook foods on a chula, a clay oven that burns coal. People sit and sleep on cots of woven string, which are dragged outside on warm days. Many people also sleep outside. If the village is without electric power, kerosene lanterns are used for light. A local well or nearby pond or river provides water for most villages. Some larger villages have running water.
It was in the beginning of the 20th century, that Mahatma Gandhi declared, "The Soul of India lives in its villages". The Indian Census of 2001, state that 74% of Indians live in 6,38,365 different villages. India has about 500,000 villages that are scattered throughout  the country, where the population varies accordingly. Some villages have a population less than 500, while 3,976 villages have a population of more than 10,000 people. In hilly regions of central, eastern and far northern India, villages are more spread out, reflecting the nature of the topography. In the wet states of West Bengal and Kerala, houses are more dispersed; in some parts of Kerala, they are constructed in continuous lines, with divisions between villages not obvious to visitors.
 A simple village life can be easily imagined; colorfully garbed village women gracefully carrying water pots on their heads, and isolated rural settlements are unsullied by the complexities of modern urban civilization. Each village has it`s own temple or mosque or church depending on the faith of the people. Village religious observances and weddings are occasions for members of various castes to provide customary ritual goods and services in order for the events to proceed according to proper tradition.
However, in reality their life is very far from simple. The villagers of India are involved in their basic occupation - agriculture. Though earlier, there used to be primitive methods of  carrying on this profession, nowadays, due to innovative methods, are able to grow wheat, rice, lentils, vegetables, fruits, and many other crops in order to accomplish the challenging task of feeding themselves and the nation. Every village is connected through a variety of essential horizontal connections with other villages and with urban areas both near and far. They are also characterized by a range of economic, caste, kinship, occupational and even religious groups linked vertically within each settlement, making these cosmopolitan, in its own way.
The number of castes resident in a single village can vary widely, from one to more than forty. Typically, a village is dominated by one or a very few castes that essentially control the village land and on whose patronage members of weaker groups must rely. In northern and central India, neighborhood boundaries are vague, with the houses of the Dalits generally located in separate neighborhoods or on the outskirts of the nucleated settlement. By contrast, in the south, the socioeconomic and caste observances are stronger than in the north, Brahman homes may be set apart from those of non-Brahmans and Dalit hamlets are set at a little distance from the homes of other castes.
In the village of about 1,100 populations near Delhi in the 1950s, the Jat caste, which are the largest cultivating caste in northwestern India comprised 60% of the residents and owned all of the village land, including the house sites. In Nimkhera, Madhya Pradesh, Hindu Thakurs and Brahmans and Muslim Pathans own substantial land, while lower-ranking Weaver (Koli) and Barber (Khawas) caste members and others own smaller farms. In many areas of the south, Brahmans are major landowners, along with some other relatively high-ranking castes.
 Fellow villagers typically include representatives of various service and artisan castes to supply the needs of the villagers--priests, carpenters, blacksmiths, barbers, weavers, potters, oilpressers, leatherworkers, sweepers, waterbearers and toddy-tappers. Artisans in pottery, wood, cloth, metal, and leather, although are diminishing, continue in many contemporary Indian villages. Aside from caste-associated occupations, villages often include people who practice nontraditional occupations, like the Brahmans or Thakurs may be shopkeepers, teachers, truckers, or clerks, in addition to their caste-associated occupations of priest and farmer.
Apart from the many caste barriers and differences, there are many observances that emphasize a village unity. Typically, each village recognizes a deity deemed the village protector or protectress, and villagers unite in regular worship of this deity, considered essential to village prosperity. They may cooperate in constructing temples and shrines important to the village as a whole. Hindu festivals such as Holi, Diwali, and Durga Puja bring villagers together.  In the north villages, even Muslims join in the Holi festival, which involve village wide singing, dancing, and joking. In the north, when the all-male groom`s party arrives from another village, residents of the bride`s village in North India treat the visitors with the appropriate behavior due to them as bride-takers. A woman born in a village in India is known as a daughter of the village while an in-married bride is considered a daughter-in-law of the village. A groom who chooses to live in his wife`s natal village - usually for reasons of land inheritance - is known by the name of his birth village.
The disputes in the villages traditionally were decided within the village precincts as much as possible, with infrequent recourse to the police or court system. Mostly a headman was appointed and the "Panchayat", which composed of important men from the village`s major castes, were the decision makers in the entire problem solving techniques. They had the power to levy fines and exclude transgressors from village social life. In present-day India, the government supports an elective Panchayat and headman system, which is distinct from the traditional council and headman, and, in many instances, even includes women and very low-caste members. However, since nowadays, the system has got its own flaws, the villagers mostly take their disputes to the courts.
No matter however, strong the bond of the villagers is, it is an obvious point that their unity is challenged by a lot of conflicts, rivalries, and factionalism. The fellow villagers are prone to their disputes, strategic contests and even violence. Most villages of India include the prosperous, powerful people, which are fed and serviced through the labors of the lower class people. Unfortunately, no change can be seen in this class structure, due to the increased involvement of villagers with the wider economic and political world outside the village. Due to the expanding government influence in rural areas and increased pressure on land and resources, the populations are yet a target of factionalism and competitiveness in many parts of rural India.
The Village Life
It has been for many years, that the life of a villager has always been the same. It includes an average villager struggling to make his ends meet by practising the age old occupation of agriculture and also being bounded in the shackles of the rigid caste-system throughout his life.
Indian Village Art
The Indian village scene is full of surprises and talent. Apart from the basic occupation of farming, the Indian villagers, being talented individuals have innovated their own village art, which have very distinctive and special village culture in them. The art of every village is distinctive and this shows in the various paintings by these people.
Some of the important Villages of India are
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