The Digital India BHASHINI Division (DIBD) under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) recently organised BHASHINI Samudaye: Strengthening India’s Language AI Ecosystem in New Delhi, in collaboration with Wadhwani AI. The workshop marked a key step towards consolidating India’s language AI ecosystem through collaboration, participatory governance and shared ownership of public digital infrastructure.

Senior officials from MeitY and the BHASHINI Division outlined the vision for a coordinated, sovereign and inclusive language AI framework anchored in ethical data practices, community participation and public digital infrastructure. A fireside discussion traced the evolution of BHASHINI as a national language AI platform and highlighted the role of ecosystem partnerships in scaling multilingual AI for governance, education and public service delivery.

The workshop brought together language experts, academic institutions, civil society organisations and data practitioners to examine use cases and pathways for co-creating, governing and scaling language AI solutions under the National Language Translation Mission. Discussions focused on responsible data practices, quality standards and long-term collaboration to ensure inclusivity and scalability.

Key sessions covered platform capabilities, strategic priorities and collaboration pathways, alongside presentations on BHASHINI’s expansion roadmap. Live demonstrations showcased real-world applications and BhashaDaan, the citizen contribution platform enabling public participation in language data creation. An Expression of Interest was also introduced to strengthen ethical and inclusive data partnerships.

Participants emphasised the importance of structured dataset creation, domain accuracy and community-led contributions to reflect India’s linguistic diversity. The workshop concluded with a reaffirmation of collective commitment to ensure language does not remain a barrier to digital inclusion.

As part of these efforts, BHASHINI, in collaboration with the Gates Foundation and implemented by Civic Data Lab, launched the Dataset Onboarding Supporting Team to strengthen the identification and onboarding of high-value multilingual datasets into BHASHINI and AI Kosh, supporting inclusive AI development across key public sectors.