The Digital India BHASHINI Division (DIBD), under the Digital India Corporation (DIC), Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Government of India, organised a workshop at Maharashtra Mantralaya in collaboration with the Language Department, Government of Maharashtra, to explore the potential of multilingual and voice-enabled Artificial Intelligence (AI) in strengthening access to digital services, government information and citizen-facing applications in preferred languages.
The engagement focused on the role of Language AI in enabling more inclusive, accessible and citizen-centric digital governance, particularly by bringing language technologies closer to citizens in Marathi and other Indian languages. The discussions highlighted the importance of building digital systems that can understand, process and communicate in the languages people use in their everyday lives.
The BHASHINI team showcased its multilingual AI capabilities through live demonstrations of speech recognition, speech-to-text, text-to-speech, translation and voice-enabled interaction. The demonstrations highlighted how these technologies can be integrated into public services to enable more natural and inclusive interaction between citizens and digital systems.
A key focus of the workshop was the importance of high-quality and representative language data in developing locally relevant AI systems. The discussions highlighted opportunities for greater participation by language experts, government institutions, academia and communities in strengthening language datasets and advancing Language AI for Marathi and other Indian languages. In this context, BhashaDaan, BHASHINI’s crowdsourcing initiative, offers a platform for citizens to contribute language data and help build stronger language resources.
The engagement also explored the potential for department-specific Language AI, including the incorporation of specialised terminology used across government departments. Such capabilities can help improve the understanding and processing of government content while enabling more effective multilingual communication across public services.
Discussions further explored the potential of a Maharashtra-focused multilingual AI ecosystem, including the proposed MahaBHASHINI concept, to support language-inclusive experiences across areas such as tourism, transport and other public-facing services. The workshop also provided an opportunity to identify priority use cases and areas for collaboration between the Government of Maharashtra and BHASHINI.
The workshop brought together government officials, language experts and stakeholders to exchange ideas and identify opportunities for collaboration in language technology, datasets, research and real-world applications of Language AI.
The engagement at Maharashtra Mantralaya marks another step towards strengthening Centre-State collaboration in building an inclusive multilingual digital ecosystem, where language becomes an enabler of access, participation and digital empowerment.