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The Government of India has announced that text-based Large Language Models (LLMs) under Bharat GenAI will be completed in all 22 Constitutionally recognised (Scheduled) Indian languages within this month, while speech and vision capabilities are already available in 15 Indian languages.

What is Bharat GenAI?

Bharat GenAI (BharatGen) is India’s first government-supported sovereign foundational Artificial Intelligence initiative, designed specifically for Indian languages, culture, and societal needs. It aims to build indigenous AI models rather than relying on foreign, linguistically homogeneous systems.

Key Objectives

• Develop sovereign AI capabilities for India
• Ensure linguistic inclusiveness and cultural authenticity
• Support domain-specific AI applications such as agriculture, Ayurveda, and legal systems
• Build a national AI research and innovation ecosystem

Core Components

Bharat GenAI has three principal AI components:

1. Text – Large Language Models (LLMs)
2. Speech – Text-to-Speech (TTS) and Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR)
3. Vision – Vision and vision-language models

Languages Covered (Present)

Hindi, Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Maithili, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Odia, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Sindhi, Tamil and Telugu.

Institutional & Governance Framework

• Developed under the National Mission on Interdisciplinary Cyber-Physical Systems (NM-ICPS)
• Implemented through the TIH Foundation for IoT and IoE at IIT Bombay
• Executed via a network of 25 Technology Innovation Hubs (TIHs)
• 4 TIHs upgraded to Technology Translational Research Parks (TTRPs) at:
  • IIT Indore
  • IIT Kanpur
  • IIT Dhanbad
  • IISc Bengaluru
• Consortium partners include IIT Hyderabad, IIT Madras, IIT Kanpur, IIT Mandi and IIT Indore

Four Pillars of Bharat GenAI

1. Technology Development
2. Entrepreneurship & Start-ups
3. Human Resource Development
4. International Collaboration

Key Features

• Multilingual and multimodal AI models
• Training on Bhartiya (India-specific) datasets
• Open-source orientation
• Emphasis on ethical, inclusive and indigenous AI

Compute & Funding Support

• Dedicated AI Compute Pillar under IndiaAI Mission
• Access to shared GPU resources at subsidised rates
• Encouragement of private sector participation
• Backed by ?1 lakh crore Research, Development and Innovation (RDI) funding initiative

Significance for India

• Reduces dependence on foreign AI models
• Strengthens digital sovereignty
• Promotes inclusive AI access across regions
• Enables AI adoption in governance, judiciary, healthcare and agriculture