Parliament Question: Development of multilingual AI

GOVERNMENT OF INDIA MINISTRY OF ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY RAJYA SABHA UNSTARRED QUESTION NO. 1667 TO BE ANSWERED ON: 13.02.2026 DEVELOPMENT OF MULTILINGUAL AI 1667. SHRI SATNAM SINGH SANDHU: Will the Minister of ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY be pleased to state: (a) the details of public, multilingual Artificial Intelligence (AI) initiatives undertaken by Government, including BharatGen and allied platforms, along with their objectives and present status; (b) the budgetary allocations made for these initiatives during the last three financial years and the allocations proposed for 2026-27; (c) the steps taken to promote development of low-data, energy-efficient and cost-effective AI models suited to Indian conditions, particularly for governance, healthcare and education; and (d) the measures taken to ensure data security, ethical use and democratic accountability in the deployment of such AI systems across public institutions? ANSWER MINISTER OF STATE FOR ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (SHRI JITIN PRASADA) (a) to (d): India’s AI strategy is based on the Hon’ble Prime Minister's vision to democratize the use of technology. It aims to address India centric challenges, create economic and employment opportunities for all Indians. IndiaAI Mission: In March 2024, Government of India launched IndiaAI mission with outlay of Rs 10,372 Cr for development of the overall AI ecosystem in the country. In less than 24 months, India AI Mission has set up a foundation for development of AI ecosystem in the country: • More than 38 thousand GPUs for common compute facility have been onboarded, which are being provided to Indian start-ups and academia at an affordable rate. • Twelve teams have been shortlisted for development of indigenous foundational models or Large Language Models. • Thirty applications have been approved for developing India specific AI applications. • More than 8000 undergraduate students, 5000 post graduate students and 500 PhD students are being supported for talent development. • 27 India Data and AI labs have been established and 543 more have been identified.India’s own Foundational Models under the IndiaAI Mission: The IndiaAI Innovation Centre (Foundation Models) pillar aims to develop India’s own large multimodal models trained on Indian datasets and languages to ensure sovereign capability and global competitiveness in generative AI. • Twelve organisations and consortia, including startups, industry players and academic institutions. • These include Sarvam AI, Soket AI, Gnani AI, Gan AI, Avatar AI, IIT Bombay Consortium (BharatGen), GenLoop, Zentieq, Intellihealth, Shodh AI, Fractal Analytics Ltd. and Tech Mahindra Maker’s Lab, have been selected for developing Large and Small Language Models based on Indian datasets. • The resulting AI models will contribute to the open-source ecosystem and be available for use by Government organizations and also support innovation across India’s startup and research community. • Financial assistance is being provided to selected organizations to cover actual compute usage costs, while an additional 25% of the compute expenditure is being earmarked to support ancillary expenses such as datasets and personnel. The details of support extended are placed at Annexure I. The Government has adopted a holistic and sustainability-oriented approach for AI compute infrastructure under the IndiaAI Mission. The IndiaAI Compute pillar promotes sustainability through a shared national AI compute infrastructure model, which avoids fragmented and duplicative capacity creation and enables optimal utilisation of high-performance compute resources. The key initiatives taken by the government in this regard are: • Under the ‘Safe & Trusted AI’ Pillar of the India AI Mission focusses on bias mitigation, machine unlearning, privacy-preserving architectures, algorithm auditing tool, deepfake detection, risk-assessment protocols, and ethical AI frameworks, to accelerate safe and trustworthy AI. 13 projects have been selected to under the pillar to strengthen responsible AI adoption • The AI Foundation Models pillar supports the development of indigenous foundational models, including large language and multimodal models, aligned with India’s linguistic, cultural and socio-economic diversity. • AI Kosh enables controlled and secure access to India based datasets, thereby supporting data governance, privacy protection and responsible data use. • India AI Governance Guidelines: o The India AI Governance Guidelines lay down a national framework to ensure that AI systems in India are safe, trustworthy, human-centric and inclusive, while continuing to promote innovation and economic growth. o The guidelines are anchored around seven core principles (Sutras), including Trust, People First, Innovation over Restraint, Fairness & Equity, Accountability, Understandable by Design and Safety, Resilience & Sustainability. o A risk-based governance approach is recommended, with proportionate safeguards for high-risk AI use cases, including measures to address algorithmic bias, misinformation, deepfakes and unintended societal harm.o The framework proposes strengthening institutional mechanisms through the establishment of bodies such as an AI Governance Group, Technology & Policy Expert Committee, and an AI Safety Institute to guide oversight, standards and safety research. • The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 provides a robust legal framework for data privacy and protection, imposing obligations on data fiduciaries and ensuring lawful, fair and secure processing of personal data used in AI applications. • Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In): The guidelines issued by the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) provide specific safeguards for the safe and responsible use of AI tools: o An advisory on safety measures to be taken to minimize the adversarial threats arising from Artificial Intelligence (AI) based applications was published in May 2023. o The Certified Security Professional in Artificial Intelligence (CSPAI) program launched by CERT-In and SISA in September 2024. o An advisory depicting best practices for effective and responsible use of Generative AI solutions was published in March 2025. o The CSPAI program equips cybersecurity professionals with the skills to secure AI systems, proactively address AI-related threats, and ensure trustworthy AI deployment in business environments. o CERT-In co-signed ANSSI’s February 2025 report “Building trust in AI through a cyber risk-based approach” advocating a risk-based framework to secure AI systems and value chains and urging global dialogue on mitigating AI-related cyber risks for trusted development. ******* Annexure I Support extended to the Organizations selected under the IndiaAI Innovation Centre (Foundation Models) Pillar SNo. Name of Compute Non- Total Cost (Cr) Organization Support Compute Worth Cost (Cr) (Cr) 1 Sarvam ₹246.72 ₹0.00 246.72 2 Gnani ₹177.27 ₹0.00 177.27 3 Gan AI ₹88.02 ₹22.01 110.03 4 Soket AI ₹162.47 ₹14.61 177.08 5 Avataar AI ₹12.88 ₹3.22 16.10 6 Bharatgen ₹990.92 ₹67.60 1,058.52 7 Fractal ₹137.91 ₹0.00 137.91 8 Tech Mahindra ₹2.66 ₹0.00 2.669 Zenteiq ₹165.19 ₹41.30 206.49 10 Genloop ₹2.09 ₹0.52 2.61 11 Intellihealth ₹41.50 ₹8.00 49.50 12 Shodh AI ₹7.52 ₹1.88 9.40 ******