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Guwahati AI Meet Advances Language Tech for India's Linguistic Diversity

The Human Capital Working Group Meeting in Guwahati emphasized practical AI applications to enhance language access and digital inclusion across India. Experts detailed the National Language Translation Mission's evolution and its focus on India's 22 constitutional languages. Sessions highlighted efforts to support low-resource languages in the Northeast through data collection and tool development. The Bhashini platform was showcased as a key initiative for enabling voice-based, multilingual access to government and digital services.

Key Points: AI Language Tech Focus at Guwahati Human Capital Meet

  • AI for language access & education
  • Focus on 22 constitutional languages
  • Northeast's 200+ languages targeted
  • Bhashini enables voice-based digital services
2 min read

Human capital meet in Guwahati focuses on language AI, Bhashini

Discussions on AI for language access, education, and digital inclusion in India, featuring Bhashini and National Language Translation Mission.

"The initiative aims to build core AI and language technologies that reflect India's vast linguistic diversity. - Mitesh Khapre"

New Delhi, Jan 6

The second day of the Human Capital Working Group Meeting in Guwahati concluded on Tuesday with detailed discussions on how artificial intelligence can be practically implemented to improve language access, education and digital inclusion across India.

The two-day meeting was organised by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and the IndiaAI Mission, in collaboration with the Assam Government and IIT Guwahati.

The day began with a session on the architecture of the National Language Translation Mission.

Speaking at the session, Mitesh Khapre from IIT Madras, who also heads AI4Bharat, explained how the mission has evolved over the past four years.

"The initiative aims to build core AI and language technologies that reflect India's vast linguistic diversity," he said.

Khapre noted that the mission focuses on the 22 constitutionally recognised Indian languages, which together cover nearly 99 per cent of the country's population.

Another key session focused on language technology development in the Northeast.

Rohit Sinha from IIT Guwahati highlighted the region's unique linguistic richness, pointing out that the Northeast is home to nearly 200 languages despite having a small share of India's population.

He said the Centre for Linguistic Science and Technology at IIT Guwahati is supporting government-led language missions through local data collection, native-speaker participation and the development of tools such as machine translation, speech recognition and text-to-speech systems.

By focusing on low-resource languages like Assamese and Mizo, the Centre is helping improve access to education, governance and digital services.

The BHASHINI platform also featured prominently in the discussions. Jyotismita Devi from the Digital India BHASHINI Division explained that the initiative aims to make digital platforms more accessible through voice-based and language-inclusive technologies.

She said BHASHINI allows citizens to interact with government services and digital platforms in their own languages, even if they have limited literacy or internet skills.

The final session of the day focused on AI education and was led by Amit Awekar from IIT Guwahati.

Addressing students, he spoke about using a reverse engineering approach to teach AI.

- IANS

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Reader Comments

R
Rohit P
Focusing on the Northeast's 200 languages is crucial. Often, development feels Delhi-centric. Glad IIT Guwahati is leading this. Hope tools for Assamese and Mizo come soon - digital India should be for all Indians.
A
Amit Awekar
The reverse engineering approach to teach AI that Prof. Awekar mentioned sounds interesting. We need more such practical pedagogy in our engineering colleges, not just theory. Hope this spreads to other IITs and NITs.
S
Sarah B
Working in tech in Bangalore, I see the language barrier daily. Bhashini could revolutionize how rural India accesses services. But implementation is key - hope the tools are lightweight for low internet areas.
K
Karthik V
Respectfully, while 22 languages cover 99% population, what about the remaining 1%? That's still crores of people. Hope the mission eventually includes even smaller languages and dialects. Every mother tongue matters.
M
Meera T
Great to see Guwahati as the host! Northeast has so much to contribute to India's tech story. Local data collection with native speakers is the right approach. Jai Hind! 🇮🇳

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