India’s BHASHINI Platform Shifts From Rule-Based Systems To AI-Driven Language Services

New Delhi witnessed a major step in India’s digital language ecosystem as the national AI platform BHASHINI shifted from rule-based systems to AI-powered engines.

The platform now provides language services to citizens across the country, advancing the goal of full societal inclusivity, according to senior government officials.

The Digital India BHASHINI Division operates under the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY). It organised ‘BHASHINI Samudaye: Strengthening India’s Language AI Ecosystem’ in collaboration with Wadhwani AI.

The ministry further stated that the event marked a key milestone in consolidating India’s language AI ecosystem. It achieved this through collaborative engagement, participatory governance, and shared ownership of public digital infrastructure.

Amitabh Nag, CEO of the Digital India BHASHINI Division, said, “Samudaye is about building a living ecosystem. Data creators, annotators, translators, developers, users, and governments co-develop language technology together. They share value and responsibility.”

Professor Girish Nath Jha from Jawaharlal Nehru University emphasised the importance of structured datasets, domain-specific accuracy, and community participation. He highlighted their role in ensuring AI systems reflect India’s linguistic diversity.

The workshop convened language experts, academic institutions, civil society organisations, and data practitioners to examine use cases. It also aimed to identify pathways for co-creating, governing, and scaling language AI solutions under the National Language Translation Mission (NLTM).

Shobha L, Member Research Staff at the AU-KBC Research Centre, noted that BHASHINI’s translation capabilities cover sentence-level translation. She said the platform also supports discourse-level and conversational translation. BHASHINI works across all 22 scheduled languages, as well as non-scheduled languages and dialects.

She added that addressing challenges in Dravidian languages, which often lack Sanskrit equivalents, requires expanded datasets and sustained collaboration.

In partnership with the Gates Foundation and implemented by Civic Data Lab, BHASHINI, however, launched the Dataset Onboarding Supporting Team (DOST).

This initiative systematically identifies, prepares and onboards high-value datasets into BHASHINI and the AI Kosh. It supports the development of inclusive AI language solutions for India.

Through these efforts, BHASHINI aims to ensure no language is left behind, promoting accessibility, inclusivity, and community-driven AI development across the nation.

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