Which initiative, designed to revolutionise public service delivery and boost…
2025
Which initiative, designed to revolutionise public service delivery and boost citizen engagement through generative AI in language, speech, and computer vision, was inaugurated in September 2024?
Answer: C. BharatGen — Concept — A national foundation-model mission is a government-funded programme that builds base generative-AI models — for language (text), speech and vision…
- A.
AI for India
- B.
SmartGov AI
- C.
BharatGen
- D.
Digital India AI
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: C
Concept — A national foundation-model mission is a government-funded programme that builds base generative-AI models — for language (text), speech and vision — trained on indigenous data, so that many downstream applications, including public services, can be built on top of them. An initiative of this kind is identified by three markers: the sponsoring ministry or mission that funds it, the technical scope of the models it builds, and its launch event.
Application — BharatGen is the initiative that matches all three markers:
Sponsor: funded by the Department of Science & Technology under the National Mission on Interdisciplinary Cyber-Physical Systems (NM-ICPS), and executed through the TIH Foundation for IoT & IoE at IIT Bombay.
Scope: foundation models for language, speech and computer vision across Indian languages, built to improve public service delivery and citizen engagement.
Launch: inaugurated in New Delhi on 30 September 2024 by Dr. Jitendra Singh, Union Minister of State for Science & Technology, and described as the first government-funded multimodal large language model initiative.
Cross-check — The other names denote programmes of a different kind, so none of them fits a multimodal foundation-model mission:
Name | What it actually denotes |
|---|---|
AI for India | AI for India 2.0, a free AI upskilling programme launched in July 2023 by the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship with GUVI, accredited by NCVET and IIT Madras and offered in nine Indian languages. |
SmartGov AI | "SmartGov" is e-office branding used by state administrations such as Andhra Pradesh for electronic file movement and departmental workflow automation. |
BharatGen | The DST-funded multimodal foundation-model programme anchored at IIT Bombay under NM-ICPS. |
Digital India AI | Digital India (2015) is the umbrella e-governance programme; the Centre’s dedicated AI arm is the separately approved IndiaAI Mission of March 2024. |
Result — BharatGen.
Note on the date — the primary Department of Science & Technology record places the inauguration on 30 September 2024; several current-affairs digests carried the news in early October 2024, which is why the month is sometimes quoted as October.