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The Digital India BHASHINI Division (DIBD), operating under the Digital India Corporation (DIC) of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), facilitated real-time multilingual communication at an international capacity-building programme in Mussoorie.
The National Centre for Good Governance (NCGG) is organising the Capacity Building Programme on Urban Service Delivery for Civil Servants of Multiple Countries from October 12 to 23, 2026. The training initiative functions under the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG) and receives sponsorship from the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) through the Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation (ITEC) framework. The programme convenes public-sector administrators from Peru, Cambodia, Nigeria, Kenya, Palestine, Lebanon, The Gambia, Ecuador, and Spain to exchange governance practices. During the opening ice-breaking session, BHASHINI deployed its Shrutlekh system to provide two-way translation between English and Spanish. The tool assisted foreign delegates in conversing across language barriers throughout the interactions. MeitY noted that the field deployment reflects BHASHINIs "Voice-First Multilingual AI approach," which aims to expand access to communication tools and digital public services through speech-driven systems. The division stated that the exercise demonstrated how such language systems "support inclusive international collaboration and public-sector capacity building." The technical team guided attendees through the Shrutlekh interface and demonstrated broader use cases for multilingual applications in healthcare, agriculture, finance, and citizen services. Officials also directed delegates toward the BHASHINI mobile platform for daily communication needs. The Ministry indicated that the platform will remain active across the Mussoorie sessions through October 23, subject to operational conditions. MeitY highlighted that the overall engagement illustrates the capacity of such models "to strengthen cross-cultural interaction, facilitate knowledge exchange and enable more inclusive participation in international capacity-building initiatives." Through the exercise, the division works to present domestic development in speech-translation technologies across multilateral public-sector settings. As India's language digital public infrastructure, the division creates datasets, artificial intelligence models, application programming interfaces, and specialized software tools. To date, BHASHINI technologies function across 2,353 public platforms, comprising more than 800 official government portals. The underlying system covers 36 Indian languages in text formats, 23 Indian languages through voice processing, and 35 international tongues. Ministry data records over 9 billion cumulative system inferences, currently processing more than 24 million queries each day. (ANI)
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