Digital India Bhashini Division (DIBD)

Why in the News?

Recently, the Digital India Bhashini Division (DIBD) of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India, signed an MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) with the Center for Digital Public Infrastructure and Artificial Intelligence (DPI-AI) at Kathmandu University, Nepal, to establish a collaborative framework to advance language AI, multilingual digital public infrastructure, and inclusive digital ecosystems in India and Nepal.

This partnership reflects India and Nepal's shared vision for the use of technology for inclusive development, social empowerment, and regional cooperation.
This MoU is not limited to technical cooperation alone; it is envisioned as an initiative to strengthen people-to-people contacts, promote the preservation of linguistic heritage, and ensure equal access to opportunities across the region by bridging language, literacy, and digital barriers.

Under the MoU, both institutions will collaborate to develop high-quality Nepali language datasets, speech corpora, and multilingual AI resources, including speech-to-text, text-to-speech, machine translation, and multilingual conversational AI capabilities.
The partnership will also support the preservation and digitization of the linguistic and literary heritage of under-resourced and under-represented languages in the India-Nepal region, enabling communities at risk of digital extinction to access AI-enabled tools and services in their mother tongue.
Through Bhashini's open and interoperable language technology ecosystem, the collaboration will help the Government of Nepal expand digital public services to citizens in their preferred languages, reducing language, literacy, and digital access barriers at the last mile.
The MoU also envisages joint research, capacity building, training programs, and pilot projects in the areas of natural language processing (NLP), multilingual AI, and digital public infrastructure, bringing together universities, researchers, language experts, and technology specialists from both countries.
This partnership is also expected to create new economic and social opportunities for Nepali citizens, students, entrepreneurs, and professionals by enabling multilingual access to education, skills development, digital commerce, and public services within Nepal and in regional and global markets.

Digital India Bhashini Division (DIBD), under the Digital India Corporation (DIC), Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, is India's national initiative for AI-powered multilingual digital inclusion and language technology.
Through the National Hub for Language Technology (NHLT), Bhashini provides scalable speech- and text-based AI services in Indian languages for governance, public forums, and institutions.
The platform supports over 800 government websites, processes over 15 million inferences daily, and supports 36 Indian text languages, 23 Indian speech languages, and 35 international languages.
DIBD also promotes open-source innovation, multilingual AI research, dataset creation, startup promotion, and academic collaboration, thereby strengthening India's digital public infrastructure ecosystem.