Bhashini aims for a government that listens

Kerala government departments want to hear the people loud and clear. That’s the goal officials declared at a regional workshop organised by the Digital India Bhashini Division of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) in Trivandrum recently.

The plan is to enable government websites to understand spoken Malayalam and use artificial intelligence (AI) to listen, pick up regional dialects and usages, and respond appropriately. The task is huge as the models need training with varied data sets, and even then only continuous use can make them better.

This is where the Bhashini team says they can help. Since its establishment in 2020, the division has been working hard to develop such digital tools and has made rapid progress. They now collaborate with several state governments, central ministries, banks and even Parliament.

Kerala has rolled out several digital initiatives, and Bhashini hopes that integrating its tools into these platforms will help realise the state’s e-governance dream. It offers voice-to-voice translation, voice-to-text, text-to-text and text-to-speech features, and its basic software can be shared with developers to build customised solutions.

The tools’ potential was on display at the Bhashini Rajyam Workshop for government officials when Seeram Sambasiva Rao, Special Secretary, Department of Electronics & Information Technology, spoke in a mix of English and not-so-perfect Malayalam. His words were instantly transcribed and translated on screen. It wasn’t flawless, but it captured most of what he said – and earned applause from the audience.

Finding a Voice: With a few tweaks and upgrades, such a tool can go a long way towards effective governance that reaches people at the grassroots and eases the workload of officials in critical sectors like health and other essential services. Kerala already has platforms like eHealth, K-Smart, K-Fon and Akshaya centres, which makes integration that much easier.

The rapid rise of AI in the past couple of years is unlocking new possibilities, and the move from text-based tools to voice-driven apps will benefit millions – especially in a country like India.

As we noted in our October 8, 2024 newsletter, a friendly voice speaking a local language can open the digital world to millions more. In a country with 22 official languages and hundreds of spoken ones, Bhashini could make people-to-people communication effortless. A day when someone from Kerala speaks Malayalam at a Delhi Metro counter and gets a ticket isn’t far off, say Bhashini officials.

Better Data: Another area where Bhashini has made headway is in decoding archival records written in forgotten scripts. The department is helping the Bihar government convert old court records from Kaithi to Devanagari using AI – a move that’s expected to speed up long-stalled cases where access to past records was a problem.

That’s something Kerala can relate to, with many historical records in extinct scripts like vattezhuthu and kolezhuthu. Another promising area for such tools is research into fields like the Kerala School of Mathematics, where scholars often struggle to translate ancient texts accurately because it demands expertise in Sanskrit, philosophy and history.

Kerala has digitised many records, but in most cases these are pictorial archives, making it hard to do text searches. Here, Bhashini’s audio option offers a practical edge: instead of scanning old documents, the content can be read aloud into a database, corrected by the reader, and saved. It makes the data far more accurate and searchable than static image archives or machine learning transcriptions.

Silent March: At a time when private tech giants regularly trumpet about their AI products, Bhashini rarely makes headlines. Yet its services have been far-reaching – touching more than a billion people, say officials. The department has worked with several state governments, and its tools are already used by the Panchayati Raj Ministry to make information more accessible to village officials, even when queries come in local dialects.

Amitabh Nag, CEO of Bhashini and a former TCS and HP executive, says over 70 research institutions, including IITs, are collaborating to solve problems and build new tools for government and public use. “We are not here to sell tools or services,” he told the assembled officials. “We want to create solutions by working in partnership with you.”

At a time when Large Language Models (LLMs) are in the vogue, one of Bhashini’s biggest contributions since 2020 has been building vast digital databanks in Indian languages – a goldmine for future AI developers. This could also be a boon for startups, since Bhashini’s APIs are open for private use.

Its voice chatbots already power services at nationalised banks like SBI, and Indian Railways uses them to record complaints. The central government’s grievance cell also runs Bhashini, and officials say it’s now far more user-friendly – the AI can identify departments and categories from voice input, sparing users from endless dropdown menus.

Right Path: Bhashini is a powerful tool, and in the right hands it can transform public service delivery. Decisions can be made at the top with the best of intentions – but the real challenge always lies in execution.

As Kerala IT Secretary Rao recalled, after the eHealth platform was launched, many hospital computers were left gathering dust because overworked doctors and nurses had little time to digitise records.

That’s where a voice-based system could make a difference. If trained well to understand medical terms and categories, it could ease workloads and improve patient care.

But as Rao might have realised at the workshop, this is easier said than done – no one from eHealth was even present to learn about these tools or share their experience. Still, several other departments showed keen interest, interacting with Bhashini officials to explore possibilities.

Open-source body ICFOSS, which is collaborating with Bhashini, says it will help tailor solutions for each department. With the right people using the right tools in the right way, Kerala could lead the next phase of people-friendly governance – powered not just by technology, but by how wisely it’s put to use.

Banzan’s Metro quiz hits the mark

At TikTalk News, we’ve always wondered why advertisers haven’t tapped into gaming platforms to reach young audiences – the one crowd every brand is desperate to woo. So, it’s refreshing to see Kochi-based Banzan Studios doing exactly that with a clever new twist. They’ve launched a daily quiz game for Metro passengers in partnership with the rail authorities, and the response so far has been buzzing. Over 5,000 commuters played during the first two weeks, with 250 daily prizes up for grabs. Around 20 per cent came back for more. That’s not just engagement – that’s habit. A whole new playground for advertisers, and one that could easily go global.

The gaming world today pulls in more money than movies and music combined, and it keeps millions hooked every single day. No wonder global giants are lining up to play. In China, during the Spring Festival last month, McDonald’s teamed up with the makers of the blockbuster game Black Myth: Wukong. The campaign – part food collab, part merch drop, part immersive in-store experience – runs till October 21. Select outlets got a full Wukong makeover, complete with black-bun moon burgers, golden crispy chicken, and sesame lava pies.

Tamil Nadu taps the data goldmine

Governments in India, both at the Centre and in the states, have been rolling out land, funding, and plenty of perks to boost startups. But with everyone now chasing the AI dream, there’s something more valuable they can offer without stretching their budgets – data. That’s exactly what Tamil Nadu is planning, according to BusinessLine. The state is working on an AI-based open data platform to help startups build innovations and solutions tailored to local needs. Around 100 datasets across agriculture, animal husbandry, health, education, traffic, and predictive governance will be made available for developers to work with.

UPI Meets ChatGPT

Soon, you might just ask ChatGPT to find that perfect pair of shoes or the dress you’ve been eyeing – and it’ll buy it for you, even as you chat away. No clicks, no checkout pages. OpenAI has teamed up with the National Payments Corporation of India and Razorpay to make this happen. A pilot run with a few merchants is already ongoing, and ChatGPT will use your UPI account to handle the payment. The feature recently went live in the US, but it’s good to see it arriving in India soon after. Global tech giants are finally treating India as a key market, not a secondary stop for tried and tested products.

Jobs that make you feel at home

Here’s a new kind of work-from-home gig if you spend hours folding and ironing your clothes. Some robotic companies will pay you for it… as long as you let them film the action. California-based Micro1 is offering 50 US dollars per hour for people to record everyday tasks like folding clothes, doing laundry, and vacuuming. The company plans to provide this data to robotics firms training future household-chore bots. Apparently, there’s a shortage of such datasets. A Time report notes that humanoid maker Figure AI plans to spend much of its new 1 billion dollars hiring humans to collect first-person video data. The only bubbles you’ll encounter in this sector, we hope, are inside the washing machines.