MeitY seeks proposals from institutes, incubators to increase Bhashini adoption

Bhashini leverages artificial intelligence to enhance access to content and services in various Indian languages

With the aim of expanding the adoption of Bhashini across the country, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) is looking to partner with educational institutions, incubators and accelerators and is seeking technical proposals from interested parties.

The Digital India Bhashini Division, an independent business division under the Digital India Corporation of MeitY, has set a deadline for submission of proposals till July 10, 2024.  Bhashini aims to develop a national public digital platform for languages, enhancing access to content and services in various Indian languages through AI and natural language proessing (NLP) technologies.

Selected educational institutions/incubators/acceleartors will become the nodal centers for promoting Bhashini in their respective regions, according to request for empanelment floated by the ministry.

The selected entities will conduct research on improving accuracy and fluency of machine translation; develop domain-specific language models for government, education, healthcare and so on.

Bhashini is also planning to introduce gamified mobile applications or educational tools for its promotion, and will also seek help from selected collaborators for developing it.

Before July 10 (the last date for receiving proposals), the ministry will hold meetings with interested parties who may have queries on the request for empanelment.

After the institutions, incubators and accelerators submit their proposals, MeitY will conduct a field visit as part of the selection process.

The ministry has been trying to integrate and introduce Bhashini into several processes, such as payments and so on. Recently, it was reported that the government was developing a WhatsApp chatbot called Bhashini, powered by ChatGPT, to help Indian farmers access information on various government schemes.

The chatbot currently supports 12 languages, including Hindi, English, Tamil, Telugu, and Marathi, with plans to expand its language capabilities further​.

In April 2024, MeitY launched several initiatives under the Bhashini project. One key development was the announcement of recruitment for various contract positions to support the project.

Additionally, the government held discussions with researchers and startups to integrate innovative technologies into Bhashini, aiming to enhance language translation capabilities and digital inclusion​ (MeitY)​.