Mumbai: The Digital India Bhashini Division (DIBD) of Digital India Corporation (DIC), under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, organised a workshop at Maharashtra Mantralaya in collaboration with the Maharashtra Government’s Language Department to explore the potential of multilingual and voice-based artificial intelligence for inclusive digital governance.
The workshop focused on strengthening access to digital services, government information and citizen-centric applications in preferred languages, particularly Marathi and other Indian languages. Discussions highlighted the need for digital systems capable of understanding, processing and communicating in the languages used by citizens in their everyday lives.
The Bhashini team demonstrated its multilingual AI capabilities through live demonstrations of speech recognition, speech-to-text, text-to-speech, translation and voice-based interaction. The demonstrations highlighted how such technologies can be integrated into public services to make interactions between citizens and digital platforms more accessible and seamless.
A key focus was the importance of high-quality and representative language data for developing locally relevant AI systems. Participants discussed greater involvement of language experts, government institutions, academics and communities in strengthening datasets for Marathi and other Indian languages. Bhashini’s crowdsourcing initiative, Bhashadaan, provides citizens with a platform to contribute language data and help build stronger linguistic resources.
The workshop also examined the potential for department-specific language AI, including the incorporation of specialised terminology used by government departments. Such systems could improve the understanding and processing of government content while enabling more effective multilingual communication in public services.
Participants further explored the possibility of developing a Maharashtra-focused multilingual AI ecosystem, including the proposed Mahabhashini concept for promoting language-inclusive experiences in sectors such as tourism, transport and other public services. The workshop helped identify priority use cases and potential areas of collaboration between the Maharashtra Government and Bhashini.
Government officials, language experts and other stakeholders participated in discussions on language technology, datasets, research and real-world applications of language AI. The initiative marked another step towards strengthening Centre-State cooperation for an inclusive multilingual digital ecosystem where language can serve as a tool for access, participation and digital empowerment.
The Digital India Bhashini Division is building a national ecosystem for AI-powered multilingual digital inclusion. Bhashini supports 36 Indian text languages, 23 Indian speech languages and 35 international languages, powers more than 800 government websites, and has enabled over 9 billion cumulative AI inferences. It processes more than 24 million AI inferences daily. Its National Hub for Language Technology (NHLT) is among the largest inference platforms in the Global South, supporting the expanding use of language AI across government and public digital services.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
