National Education Policy 2020 places strong emphasis on the fusion of technology with education, particularly in the context of preserving and promoting the nation’s diverse linguistic heritage/diversity. National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) is running a Bhasha Sangam programme as also Machine Translation cell which is translating various books into the scheduled languages.  All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and University Grants Commission (UGC) have leveraged Anuvadini App to translate books for Under Graduate and Post Graduate courses including technical books in multiple Indian languages. The translated books are available on e-KUMBH portal.  National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET), Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) and Common University Entrance Test (CUET) have been conducted in 13 languages.  Engineering education is being imparted in certain (AICTE) approved institutions in 8 regional languages. Course material including text books and teaching resources are available on Digital Infrastructure for Knowledge Sharing (DIKSHA) portal in 33 Indian Languages. ASMITA (Augmenting Study Materials in Indian Languages through Translation and Academic Writing) is a new initiative by University Grants Commission (UGC) towards promotion of Indian languages in Education.

Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) has launched Mission Digital India Bhashini in the year 2022 to develop core language technologies for speech and text translation for 22 Scheduled Indian languages in the open source. The Bhashini open Application Programming Interface (APIs) for language translation in text and voice have been listed on API Setu (https://apisetu.gov.in). Bhashini APIs are available for anyone to integrate with any application.

The information was given by the Minister of State for Education, Dr. Sukanta Majumdar in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha today.

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