Lok Sabha Question No. 3062 (UNSTARRED), answered on 2025-03-19
Subject: Development of Artificial Intelligence Hub
Ministry: ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
Asked by: Shri Suresh Kumar Shetkar

## GOVERNMENT OF INDIA MINISTRY OF ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

## LOK SABHA

## UNSTARRED QUESTION. NO. 3062

TO BE ANSWERED ON: 19.03.2025

## DEVELOPMENT OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE HUB

## 3062. SHRI SURESH KUMAR SHETKAR:

Will the Minister of ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY be pleased to state:

- (a)  whether  the  Government  is  developing  an  Artificial  Intelligence  (AI)  hub  to  enable effective  and  efficient  dissemination  of  information  on  various  Government  initiatives  and the platform will also have the facility for multilingual translation of contents for an effective outreach  to  the  masses  across  the  country  and  other  initiatives  included:  Digital  India Bhashini, a language translation platform; BharatGen, the world's first Government-funded multimodal large language model, the Sarvam-1 AI LLM; Chitralekha, an open-source video trans creation platform and the multilingual AI system Everest 1.0, which caters to various Indian languages; and
- (b) if so, the details thereof and the way in which these are useful to all the people along with the funds sanctioned and spent for the purpose till date?

## ANSWER

## MINISTER OF STATE FOR ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (SHRI JITIN PRASADA)

(a) and(b):The Government of India emphasizes the concept of 'AI for All,' aligning with the Hon'ble Prime Minister's vision to democratize the use of technology. This initiative aims to ensure that AI benefits all sectors of society, driving innovation and growth.

India  is  regarded  as  the  Skills  Capital  in  Technology  and  Artificial  Intelligence.  The  most reliable AI rankings place India among the top countries in AI skill penetration, AI project development capabilities, and AI policy implementation.

The Union Cabinet, led by the Hon'ble Prime Minister, approved the IndiaAI Mission on March  7,  2024 ,  as  a  strategic  initiative  to  establish  a  robust  and  inclusive  AI  ecosystem aligned with India's development goals. The mission aims to position India as a global leader in artificial  intelligence  by  fostering  innovation,  enhancing  domestic  capabilities,  and ensuring the country's tech sovereignty.The implementation of 'IndiaAI Mission' with a total outlay of Rs. 10,371.92 Cr is for a period of 5 years.

With this vision of developing a modern platform cantered around the requirements of the AI innovation  ecosystem,  the IndiaAI  Datasets  Platform  (named  as  AIKosh) has  been launched on 6 th March 2025 under the IndiaAI Mission. AIKosh functions as a unified data platform,  integrating  datasets  from  all  existing  data  platforms  as  well  as  onboarding  nongovernment data contributors and providing new-age AI-centric features.

At present the platform offers a comprehensive collection of resources for AI development, featuring  over 300  datasets sourced  from  more  than  10  entities  across  12  sectors.  It  also includes  more  than 150  AI  models provided by  5  different  entities,  alongside  a  library  of over  5  use  cases  that  demonstrate  potential  applications  using  the  available  datasets  and models. Additionally, the platform provides over 10 toolkits comprising development utilities for project integration, as well as tutorials to help users understand and navigate its features.

Further, IndiaAI on 30 th January, 2025 had launched a Call for Proposals inviting proposals from  startups,  researchers,  and  entrepreneurs  to collaborate  on  building  state-of-the-art foundational  AI  models trained  on Indian  datasets. The  initiative aims  to  establish indigenous AI models that align with  global standards while addressing unique challenges and opportunities within the Indian context.

In the first month, IndiaAI Mission has received a total of 67 proposals till 15 th Februaryaimed  at  building  India's  foundation  models,  with  contributions  from  both established  startups  and  new  teams  of  researchers  &  academia. 22  are  focused  on  Large Language Models (LLMs) & Large Multimodal Models (LMMs), while the remaining 45 are cantered on domain-specific models (SLMs). The majority of SLMs target key sectors such as healthcare, education, and financial services.

Moreover, the Government has undertaken several other initiatives as follows:

- i) Digital  India  Bhashini: Bhashini,  as  part  of  India's  National  Language  Translation Mission (NLTM), aligns with the principles of sovereign AI by focusing on creating AIdriven  language  solutions  using  domestic  infrastructure,  data,  and  talent.  Sovereign  AI refers  to  a  nation's  ability  to  independently  develop  and  manage  AI  technologies  to maintain control over its data, ensure privacy, and address specific local needs. Bhashini embodies  these  ideals  by  leveraging  India's  linguistic  datasets,  fostering  vernacular content  creation,  and  providing  translation  tools  for 22  scheduled  Indian  languages . Furthermore,  it  enhances  national  competitiveness  by  enabling  local  innovation  in  AI while reducing reliance on foreign technologies. By integrating advanced AI capabilities like  natural  language  processing  and  machine  learning,  Bhashini  demonstrates  how sovereign  AI  can  address  localized  challenges  while  contributing  to  broader  national objectives such as digital inclusion and economic growth.The total budget authorization for the project is ₹495 crore , and as of the current reporting period, expenditures have reached ₹180 crore.
2. ii) National  Mission  on  Interdisciplinary  Cyber-Physical  Systems  (NM-ICPS): The Department of Science & Technology (DST), Government of India is implementing the National  Mission  on  Interdisciplinary  Cyber  Physical  Systems  (NM-ICPS),  which  was approved by the Cabinet on December 6, 2018, with an outlay of Rs. 3,660 crore . Under this  mission,  25  Technology  Innovation  Hubs  (TIHs)  have  been  established  in  reputed academic institutions across India. Each TIH specializes in cutting-edge domains such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Machine Learning (ML), Robotics, Internet of Things (IoT), Cybersecurity,  and  FinTech  etc.  Mandate  of  the  mission  includes  i.e.  Technology Development, Human  Resource Development, Entrepreneurship Development and International Collaborations.
3. iii) BharatGen: NM-ICPS supports BharatGen a project adhered to IIT Bombay Technology Innovation Hub, BharatGen is a multimodal multilingual large language model initiative, developing  advanced  generative  AI  models  tailored  to  India's  linguistic,  cultural,  and socio-economic  diversity.  It  is  a  project  led  by  the  TIH  in  collaboration  with  premier academic  Institutes  as  partners  namely  IIT  Bombay,  IIIT  Hyderabad,  IIT  Mandi,  IIT Kanpur, IIT Hyderabad, IIM Indore and IIT Madras in AI domain which aims to develop indigenous  generative  AI  models  tailored  to  India's  linguistic  and  cultural  diversity, enabling  applications  in  areas  such  as  natural  language  processing,  text  generation, speech synthesis, and AI-powered solutions for governance, education, and healthcare. As part of this initiative, ₹89.658 crore has been released to the TIH out of the sanctioned budget of ₹235.176 crore to support its research and development efforts.

Further,  BharatGen  is  creating  a  network  of  data  collection  procedures  and  partners  to reach  out  and  collect  data  from  a  diverse  range  of  people,  including  the  marginalised communities  in  remote  locations,  underrepresented  communities,  previously  untapped populations  and  the  populations  that  do  not  have  a  written  script  or  significant  written corpus that can be digitized, for the purpose of representative data collection. Using this data, BharatGen is focused to build models on speech modality and then releasing opensource versions of these models for use by government, public and private organizations.

- iv) Vikaspedia: "Vikaspedia  is  a  MeitY  initiative  to  promote  an  AI-augmented  digital ecosystem to leapfrog the availability and accessibility of citizen-centric digital information  in Indian languages,  thereby empowering  citizens  and  driving  digital transformation.

The  project leverages the available AI  models  in its multilingual, multi-sectoral collaborative  knowledge  sharing  platform  (www.vikaspedia.in)  for  use  cases  such  as Machine  Assisted  Translation  (MAT),  Automatic  Speech  Recognition  (ASR),  assisted content  drafting,  Optical  Character  Recognition  (OCR),  chatbot,  enhanced  content discovery, etc. The language datasets aggregated as part of the platform are also being shared for further development of AI models in various Indian languages.

The  AI  enabled  platform  of  Vikaspedia  facilitates  citizens  and  other  development stakeholders to access and share information in multiple Indian languages related to best practices, technologies, government policies and schemes, etc., covering various sectors such  as  Agriculture,  Education,  Social  welfare,  Energy,  etc.  No  exclusive  funds  have been sanctioned for development of AI models in the project. The project uses the models developed as part of various initiatives such as Bhashini.

- v) National AI Portal: National AI Portal (https://indiaai.gov.in/) serves as a comprehensive  repository  of  Artificial  Intelligence  (AI)  initiatives  in  the  country.  The portal showcases various initiatives undertaken under the IndiaAI Mission and acts as a single point of reference for individuals, researchers, and industry professionals seeking information  about  AI  initiatives  in  India,  including  academic  research,  startups,  policy initiatives, and other related information.

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