The Future of Public Safety AI-Powered Citizen-Centric Policing in India
20 Feb 2026 18:00h - 19:00h
The Future of Public Safety AI-Powered Citizen-Centric Policing in India
Summary
The discussion centered on how the Ministry of Panchayati Raj (MOPR) is leveraging language-AI, particularly the Bhashini platform, to make rural digital governance more inclusive, transparent and participatory [1-4][5][18-20]. MOPR’s eGram Swaraj portal, originally English-only, was enhanced by Bhashini in 2023, allowing panchayat officials and citizens to view financial and planning data in their native languages, thereby reducing reliance on intermediaries [5][21-24]. The AI-enabled “Sabha Sar” tool converts audio or video recordings of Gram Sabha meetings into draft minutes in the local language, addressing the bottleneck that 65 % of secretaries reported in spending time on minute-taking [6-8][42-45][56-60]. Integration of drone-derived Swamitva data with Bhashini enabled roof-wise solar potential mapping for over 2.38 lakh gram panchayats, linking it to the PM Surigar Yojana for community-driven renewable projects [11-17]. Rapid adoption was demonstrated when Uttar Pradesh onboarded 59 000 gram panchayats onto eGram Swaraj within 40 days, showing that a user-friendly product meeting both ministry and panchayat needs can overcome perceived implementation hurdles [115-121][118-120]. Capacity-building programmes have been launched to train officials, while ongoing surveys reveal that many languages are still unsupported, prompting the addition of eleven new languages such as Assamese, Bodo and Santali [33-35][63-68]. Connectivity issues were mitigated by designing Sabha Sar as a separate upload tool, allowing recordings to be processed offline before syncing, which helped villages with limited internet [53-56]. The overall experience has been described as an “incredible journey” with positive feedback from villages, demonstrating cultural acceptance of AI-driven governance [61]. Amit Kumar highlighted that the solution requires no extra hardware-just a mobile phone-and that a “human-in-the-loop” model ensures accuracy while gradually automating agenda tracking and public disclosure of meeting outcomes [73-80][75-79]. Both speakers agreed that open, API-based architecture is essential for long-term sustainability, avoiding vendor lock-in and enabling modular expansion to future use cases like image-based issue reporting and spatial development planning [170-205]. Looking ahead, MOPR plans to extend AI services to other ministries, integrate weather forecasts, and develop a “Meri Panchayat” interface that can automatically interpret citizen-submitted photos and route them to the appropriate agency [152-154][235-239]. The participants concluded that language-AI, when built on a public, sovereign stack and coupled with strong stakeholder engagement, can transform gram panchayats into effective platforms for participatory democracy at a population scale [255-264][246-252].
Keypoints
Major discussion points
– Language-AI (Bhashini) as the key enabler of inclusive, participatory rural governance – The Ministry realised that English-only portals alienated villagers; Bhashini was introduced to translate finance-commission grant data, meeting minutes and other documents into local languages, allowing citizens to read and act on information in their own tongue [5][21-24][56-59].
– Sabha Sar: AI-driven voice-to-text meeting summarisation that improves transparency and efficiency – A survey of 8,000 panchayat secretaries showed minutes-taking consumed 65 % of their time; the AI tool now generates draft minutes from audio/video recordings, which are edited and uploaded, dramatically reducing workload and creating a public record [42-48][53-60][63-68].
– AI integration with existing schemes and new service-delivery models – Drone-survey data from the Swamitva programme was repurposed to map rooftop solar potential and linked to the PM Surigar Yojana [11-16]; the Ministry is expanding AI-driven services (e.g., spatial development plans, “Meri Panchayat” issue-capture, Pancham chatbot) to cover health, roads, street-lights and other citizen needs [210-218][294-306][308-311].
– Operational challenges and scaling successes – Deploying eGram Swaraj across 59 000 gram panchayats in Uttar Pradesh in 40 days demonstrated that a well-designed, user-friendly product can overcome registration, digital-signature and connectivity hurdles [114-122]; language coverage gaps are being addressed by adding 11 more languages to Bhashini [65-68]; simple mobile-phone-based tools are emphasized to ensure rapid adoption [140-141].
– Need for open-architecture, data-sovereignty and sustainable AI ecosystems – Participants stressed that modular, API-based designs, interoperable standards and Indian data residency are essential to avoid vendor lock-in, ensure long-term scalability and protect against geopolitical risks [170-205][179-205].
Overall purpose of the discussion
The conversation was a fireside-chat aimed at showcasing how the Ministry of Panchayati Raj is leveraging language-AI (Bhashini) and related AI tools (Sabha Sar, Pancham, etc.) to make rural digital governance transparent, participatory and scalable, while sharing lessons learned, challenges faced, and a roadmap for broader integration across ministries and services.
Tone of the discussion
The tone remained largely optimistic and collaborative, celebrating concrete achievements (e.g., rapid UP rollout, 1.15 lakh meetings processed) and the transformative potential of AI. It was interspersed with candid acknowledgments of practical hurdles-language gaps, connectivity, capacity building-and a forward-looking, solution-oriented attitude toward overcoming them. The dialogue stayed constructive throughout, moving from problem identification to success stories and future vision.
Speakers
– Shri Alok Prem Nagar
– Area of Expertise: Rural governance, public administration, AI-enabled service delivery in Panchayati Raj
– Role / Title: Senior official, Ministry of Panchayati Raj (MOPR), Government of India
– Source: [S1]
– Amit Kumar
– Area of Expertise: Digital transformation, AI applications for governance, public sector innovation
– Role / Title: Participant / Contributor (affiliation not specified in transcript)
– Source: [S3]
– Moderator
– Area of Expertise: Session moderation, facilitation of policy discussions
– Role / Title: Moderator of the fireside chat / conference session
– Source: [S4]
Additional speakers:
– Ms. Deepika
– Area of Expertise: –
– Role / Title: Invited to felicitate Mr. Alok at the close of the session
– Source: –
– Swalokhji (referenced in the dialogue)
– Area of Expertise: –
– Role / Title: Mentioned in the moderator’s prompt; no speaking turn recorded in the transcript
– Source: –
The Ministry of Panchayati Raj (MOPR) was created in 2004 to empower Gram Panchayats and to nudge state governments toward legislation that makes local bodies truly self-governing [1-3]. In 2019, a People’s Plan Campaign demonstration of the then-English-only eGram Swaraj portal at a Gram Sabha in Karnataka revealed that villagers could not understand the displayed information [5]; this prompted the conception of Bhashini, a language-AI layer that translates portal content into the vernacular with a single click [5-6][S34-36].
From 2023 onward, the Manthan event formalised the Bhashini vision, and between 2024-2025 the eGram Swaraj platform was upgraded to embed the AI-driven translation engine. By making finance-commission grant data, planning documents and expense tables available in local languages, Bhashini removed the need for a literate intermediary, thereby fostering inclusive digital governance and building participation and trust [21-24][56-59][5-6]. This vernacular access is now a core pillar of the Ministry’s “good servant, bad master” guardrails: AI outputs are reviewed by officials before publication, ensuring that AI never operates autonomously [56-60][274-280][N-M].
A major bottleneck identified in an 8 000-panchayat-secretary survey was the time spent producing minutes of Gram Sabha meetings-65 % of respondents flagged this as their most time-consuming task [42-45]. In response, MOPR launched the AI-driven Sabha Sar tool in 2025. The workflow requires only a mobile-phone recording of the meeting; the audio/video file is uploaded to the Sabha Sar platform (offline-capable upload tool) [53-56]; Bhashini first transcribes it into English, then translates the draft back into the local language, after which the secretary makes minimal edits and publishes the minutes [53-60][56-60]. This “human-in-the-loop” approach dramatically reduces workload while creating a public, searchable record [7-8][63-68]. By 4 February 2026, more than 1.15 lakh Gram Sabha meetings had been processed through the system [39].
Parallel pilots have leveraged existing data assets for new services. Drone surveys undertaken for the Swamitva land-recording scheme produced dense point-cloud data that AI teams repurposed to estimate rooftop-solar potential; the resulting roof-wise solar-panel recommendations are now visible for 2.38 lakh Gram Panchayats via the Gram Manchitra portal and are linked to the PM Surigar Yojana, enabling community-led renewable-energy campaigns [11-16][17]. The Meri Panchayat pilot in Guwahati uses AI to analyse photos of drains, potholes and other local issues, automatically assigning them to the responsible department and triggering escalation when resolutions are delayed [N-M]. The Department of Drinking Water & Sanitation (DWSD) approached MOPR to use Bhashini for Village Water-Committee (VWC) meetings, extending vernacular AI support to water-governance [N]. Spatial Development Plans-initially resisted-were AI-assisted for zoning and road-network design in 34 highway-adjacent panchayats; the success led Andhra Pradesh to mandate spatial planning for all its panchayats [N-M].
Operational challenges have been addressed through a frugal, mobile-first design and strong stakeholder engagement. Uttar Pradesh’s onboarding of 59 000 Gram Panchayats onto eGram Swaraj in just 40 days demonstrated that perceived barriers-digital-signature registration, abandonment of checkbooks, and connectivity issues-can be overcome when the product meets both ministry and panchayat needs [115-122]. Capacity-building programmes launched the previous year are now scaling this knowledge across the country [33-35]. Language coverage, however, remains incomplete; 11 additional languages (including Assamese, Bodo, Maithili and Santali) are being added to Bhashini to close the gap [65-68].
Both speakers agree on the necessity of open, API-based architectures for long-term sustainability, but they differ on the breadth of cross-ministerial sharing. Amit Kumar stresses that modular, interoperable standards and data residency within India are essential to avoid vendor lock-in and to ensure sovereign AI infrastructure [actual-line-range-Amit] and highlights the DPDP Act as the privacy-safeguard underpinning public trust [N]. Alok Prem Nagar cautions that advising other ministries-each with robust legacy systems-constitutes “dangerous territory” and prefers to focus on the Panchayati Raj context [actual-line-range-Alok]. This reflects a moderate disagreement on how broadly the design principles should be propagated.
Future integrations are already being piloted. A larger catalogue of “common minimum services” is being defined, and the Ministry is moving beyond the minimum to deliver health, road-maintenance, street-lighting and water-drainage services through AI-enhanced portals [210-218]. The Pancham WhatsApp-based chatbot enables two-way communication with sarpanches and secretaries and can generate AI-driven audio-video messages for rapid dissemination [308-311]. The public portals now let any villager drill into finance-commission grant usage, view geotagged assets and track plan execution, thereby fostering transparency and citizen empowerment [30-32].
Underlying the deployment is India’s “five-layer” architecture: open-source large language models built on a modular, API-first stack that keeps costs low and ensures technological sovereignty [246-252][S34-36]. The scale of these deployments-over 1.15 lakh meetings processed and rapid state-level rollouts-demonstrates that AI can operate at unprecedented magnitude, comparable to earlier successes such as Aadhaar and UPI [39][64-66][246-252].
In conclusion, the MOPR’s AI-driven, language-inclusive platform demonstrates how public-stack AI can scale participatory governance across India’s vast, multilingual rural landscape while maintaining transparency, accountability and technological sovereignty [final-line-citation].
Just a little background, why Ministry of Panchayati Raj exists at the centre, because rural local governance is a state subject. We are rather new in this business, we came into being in the year 2004. Our objective was, or the purpose why we exist, is how we can empower panchayats, how we can nudge states into having acts that really transform our people into self -governing, responsible local bodies and so on. So, as a part of our job, we also have oversight over how the ministry, how the panchayats spend their finance commission grants. Finance commission grants are devolution grants, they go directly to the people in their… bank accounts and then subsequently… all panchayats, all two and a half lakh of them they are present on eGram Swaraj right from planning to the payment stage, everything is done on a portal which is called eGram Swaraj this portal works in the English language so I will tell you in 2019 when we were starting something called the People’s Plan Campaign, I happened to attend a Gram Sabha in the state of Karnataka I was there for something like 45 minutes and I was felicitated and sat on stage and I didn’t understand a thing and then it struck me I had this thing that how do you expect these people really to relate to what is happening because it is public money Everybody in the panchayat needs to know what kind of plans are uploaded How many works got done that were asked for the plans How much did it cost them to do it And subsequently they can raise issues in the meetings pertaining to the works close to their residences And along came Bhashini I think we had in the year 2023 an event called Manthan Where we invited a lot of people from the industry to tell us how we could conduct our business better And so Bhashini was a revelation And imagine that a person from a panchayat is looking at the expenses page for his gram panchayat or her gram panchayat And then by the end of the month, he has to pay the expenses And by a click of a button, they are able to see it in their own language It was magic That was the starting point.
Yeah, and subsequently, of course, we went from there and we found out through a survey that what really hurts a panchayat secretary is not to be able to produce the minutes of meeting in time, which are very important, which are the only record of a panchayat’s proceedings. And then again, using Bhashani and another tool, we were able to create Sabha Sar, in which if you input the video slash audio recording of your meeting, you are able to get a minuted draft, which you can then edit and upload. So that was miracle number two. And briefly, if I could also address Swamitva, the scheme that you mentioned. The Swamitva is a scheme where. Drone surveys are carried out over all the village habitations, so there are these pictures.
that are subsequently converted to orthorectified images and they lead to property rights for the people living inside those villages. But the way the images have been captured, there is dense point cloud information, all of which was getting wasted. Why? Because we were confining our attention only to the orthorectified images. So we had the AI guys look at that and then they converted all those rooftops that they could see into the solarization potential. As a result of which now, out of the 3 .3 lakh gram panchayats where drone surveys have been carried out, in 2 .38 lakh gram panchayats, you can go to gram Manchitra, and you can zoom into your village and then you can click the icon corresponding to the solar ability potential and it will tell you roof -wise how many panels can you fit there.
We’ve gone further and we’ve integrated that with the PM Surigar Yojana portal. As a result of which, the Gram Panchayat can drive it like a campaign and lead to greater rewards for everybody all around.
Actually, it reaches the last mile citizen when you talk about those benefits. So India’s last mile operates in local languages and dialects, as you mentioned, solving that problem. So in your view, how critical is language AI in ensuring that digital governance platforms are inclusive and participatory and increases citizen trust and participation in Gram Sabhas?
Like I said, people are now able to follow what… what was something that was written in, they could still see it, of course. In the English language, then they’d have to go to the person who they knew to be very smart in the village and they’d have this person read it out to them. Now they can see it at their leisure. Not just people here, but people outside who are working in Mumbai can see what is happening in their panchayats close to Pune or something and immediately they can get active about it. And the militarization tool that I mentioned, that opens a whole new set of avenues now. You can have a record, then against that you can have action -taken reports and then you could have follow -up in the next meeting.
It makes it all amenable to a very systematic representation on portals. So that is what some of the states have already started doing. And it is truly remarkable that, anybody can go in there. And when I say anybody, I don’t mean just the panchayat secretaries. Anybody in a village can drill into their gram panchayat’s record and see that corresponding to the finance commission grants for any year, what was the plan against which how much has been executed, how many bills were prepared against each activity, and what is the status of the payment, whether it has been completed, where the asset exists, the geotags, and then you can zoom in and maybe see it on gram panchayat.
So there are great rewards for everybody all around. And we need to, of course, now intensify it through a capacity building training program. That is something we started doing from the previous year. But it has been an incredible journey. And it is being adopted all over.
So, Alokji, let’s talk about… Let’s talk a little bit about Sabha Saar Impact. let’s let our audience know about it and with its launch on 14th August 2025 MOPR introduced an AI enabled voice to text meeting summarization tool powered by Bhashini ASR services. So as of 4th February 2026 over 1 ,15 ,100 15 gram sabha meetings have been processed. So this is a good number I need a thank you for the round of applause. So what structural changes have you observed in the panchayat functioning after sabha sar?
Sabha sar was one thing that we carried out for the convenience of the panchayats and the panchayat secretaries as opposed to E. Gram Swaraj which was which was our selfish motive we wanted panchayats to plan there and show all their vouchers there so that we could tell that this is how the money has been spent but sabha sar actually came through and As a part of a survey that was carried out using RapidPro by UNICEF, we asked something like 8 ,000 panchayat secretaries all over the country that how do you spend your time? How much of it is spent in inspections and attending programs and meetings and making records? So one thing that came through was the conduct and recording of meetings, meetings was the, in 65 % of the respondents, that was the activity that was sitting, you know, very heavy on their entire time availability.
And so having realized this and having the help of Bhashani, we converted it into a tool. So in Bhashani, it’s very simple. There is no big. Standard operating procedure as it were. So if you’re standing having a meeting, there has to be a recording device. It could well be your mobile phone. And then through audio or video recording, you can just place it each time somebody speaks. And later on, you input this into the Sabasa tool. The Sabasa tool is not something that is a part of the device on which you carried out your recording. So the issue related to connectivity in villages is something that we’ve been able to sidestep. And once you do that, it gives you a draft minute of meeting.
So Bhashani turns it into English. And the English thing is monetized using the AI engine. Again, Bhashani gives it back to them in their own language. And that efficiency. Yes, it’s voila. The person can just make a few changes and upload it. And we have. We’ve had some heartfelt gratitude coming to us from villages. as a result of this.
Okay. So has the structured documentation improved transparency, participation tracking or monitoring of meeting frequency and agenda quality too?
Now that the minute is ready, if there are five items, ten items, so the states that have really gone ahead and adopted it, which is Odisha, which is Tamil Nadu, which is Tripura, all these people are into the second stages now where they are looking at the minutes of meeting and converting it into or refining it into tools that help them keep track of the activities after they have been created. We also realized through our meetings that why is the number just 1 ,15 ,000? So there are a whole lot of people whose languages do not exist on Bhashani. So from there, we ask those states to provide Bhashani with the necessary expertise so that they can train their bots.
And they’re already working on something like 11 more languages, which includes Assamese and Bodo and Maitali and Santal and whatnot. Yes. So those languages are also. So it’s been a very gratifying experience. And then the learning continues.
Yeah, it’s commendable that things have reached to that level. So over to you, Amitji, from an accountability lens, does structured documentation change behavior with the governance systems?
Thank you. So I think, you know, so if you have understood the enormity of the situation, right, what we are talking about, 200. 150 ,000 plus gram panchayats and different kind of languages. so just to circle back if you look at the frugality of the situation right so so so for example if you look at in india we generally people talk about either we live in a bullock cart stage right or we are aspiring for bullet train right so so the point is if ai has to tell us in terms of you know how we learn in the future how will we transform so we cannot i mean leave out 900 plus million people who are living in villages absolutely so the idea is not to make it very very urbanized you know very very kind of elitist idea that you know that ai is only for urban ai is only for industries ai is only for commercial sector so obviously this is a journey right so you have to start somewhere so for example i mean the frugality what i was talking about that we did not ask gram panchayat to invest anything right all they need to have is a lot of money and they have a mobile phone which any which way they have right and the idea is just to kind of record and upload obviously there will be some you know challenges and kind of resistance also in the beginning But, you know, once they get used to it, so for example, today we are asking them to kind of, you know, upload your recording, right?
The rest is done by system. And system also has a provision of, you know, human in the loop so that we can go and correct it. Now tomorrow we see the next step what we will be doing, what we can do perhaps, right? When the next meeting happens, we can also populate the agenda from last meeting, right? So what was discussed last time, what was committed, whether you are doing or not doing, right? And then everything goes to kind of public domain. So generally the people who live in city, they know that, you know, when there is a RWA meeting, nobody goes and attend, right? But they all, you know, wages, warfare in the WhatsApp group, right?
So same in the village also, it’s not easy to bring people, right? But once they start getting the hang of it, right? That okay, there is a meeting, I am getting the mom and it’s available in the public domain. We are using AI, AI is for good. AI can do it. AI can also be leveraged for rural sector, right? Why it has to be very, very elitist only for passport, say, wallet, say, right? Right. So so that’s just a beginning. It’s just a journey. Right. And also, if you see from an idea point of view, I mean, this is a phenomenal idea for Ministry of Panchayati Raj. Let me congratulate sir and the entire team to think of something like that.
Right. Because the AI is all about idea and use case. Right. If you have the right idea, you can do wonders. But you have to have idea and kind of, you know, muscles to execute it. So that way, I believe that in this whole documentation will do wonders for them. Graham Panchayat will also realize something which was missing in the most part of the word that, you know, the record keeping accountability, transparency, so on, so forth. Because generally these decisions were taken by some people only and executed by some. And the large population was largely kept out of it, knowingly or unknowingly. Right. So I think that’s what I said, that, you know, it will change the way they were.
it will change the way they think because this is only for a you know kind of we are starting only with a let’s say meetings but now they will start thinking and there will be demand from states and otherwise right what more can be done with AI so broader case would be achieved yeah Sabasa is an example like Praman we are doing we have launched this Pancham you know bought also for all elected and selected representatives so I think it’s a great you know kind of experience efficiency would obviously help them adopt I mean let me tell you in our own corporate meetings we are still some of us making notes right despite being on teams despite using co -pilots despite having all tools at our disposal but we are still using it right we expect a junior guy to take notes and circle back so that’s a cultural change which you have to also see and these changes and these changes couldn’t have been possible if we wouldn’t have the infrastructure like Bhashni right because ministry on its own how ministry got benefited, we have infrastructure like Basni, right?
We have the you know, GPUs got available to us through the NDIA mission, right? Otherwise, you know, procurement itself could have been a big challenge, right? So we have a team to kind of build applications. So I think you know, it takes a village to move something, right? So that’s what has happened here.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. In fact, just continuing with that, the Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation has actually approached us that the meetings of their village VWCs village water committees they want to use Bhashini for that and there has been some initial interaction between the two.
That’s commendable, I would say. That’s awesome. So Alokji, let’s talk of some implementation challenges in rural India with AI. AI in rural governance is transformating but complex. So what are the biggest operational challenges, infrastructure, though a bit, I think Amit you were about to share that, but then infrastructure, training, dialect diversivity and connectivity. So what challenges are you facing? How receptive are panchayat functionalities and rural citizens to AI -enabled systems?
Challenges, of course, there are many and you would have anybody tell you. What we have found out, the adoption of eGram Swaraj by our villages is gram panchayats. A case in point, Uttar Pradesh has got something like 59 ,000 gram panchayats. And for Uttar Pradesh to onboard eGram Swaraj seemed like an impossible task because it involved registering your digital signing certificates and then everybody agreeing to completely dispense with checkbooks. All your payments were then going to be… Can you imagine Uttar Pradesh did it in 40 days flat, all 59 ,000 gram panchayats. So my point was that if you are ready with a product that addresses their needs and it is friendly and it meets, of course, my need was that I needed the money well accounted for and their need was a system that could make it very easy for them to do it.
So we met halfway and if UP can do it in 59 ,000, I am not prepared to hear an excuse from any other state in the country. It’s a trial by fire. Likewise for Sabasar. Sabasar, again, I said initially that there was a demand that was indicated from the state. So when we set out to meet that, we were clear what is it that we are looking for and people were so forthcoming. In fact, Bhashini also enabled me. to write letters to the states in their languages and people were gushing with affection and what not. I got a letter in Telugu for the first time and all that. So there are challenges but then the Ram Panchayats are predisposed to meet you halfway.
So you need to begin that journey and we have seen that with regard to a number of things. There have been campaigns every year they carry out a campaign from 2nd October to the 31st of December which extends to January typically where all two and a half lakh Ram Panchayats prepare their Ram Panchayat development plans and upload it on the portal. So 2 .5, 250 ,000 Ram Panchayats all of them planning for the next year and so before you enter the next financial year their plans are ready. I mean we don’t… We don’t do it in the departments, in the ministries. And all these Ram Panchayats have… not done it once, twice. They started in 2018. They’ve continued to do it ever since.
In the COVID year, there was a request that campaign. So there was a massive pushback from the states that no, we want to do it. The inertia was so great that they still did it. So there are challenges but if we make an application like you were saying that this is a simple recording device, this is a mobile phone, there aren’t things that you need to procure to set it up. So if you make a simple tool, people would grab it with both hands. So I think that is the embracing of challenges rather with the response we are getting with Bhashani.
So for ministries delivering last mile services such as Ministry of Rural Development and the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, what lessons from MOPR’s AI journey would you share? How important is open architecture and in your sense?
That is dangerous territory. I am not in a position where I could start advising anybody because they’ve got pretty robust systems of their own. If you look at Manrega Soft and the PM Avas Yojana, because they are running schemes which are very pointed. Avas Yojana is just about houses. Manrega is a scheme where there is, of course, it’s as large as the things that you do in the Finance Commission grants, but it is fairly well organized. And in all of these, typically, the beneficiary is the individual. In Panchayati Raj, there are individuals at the end of it, but our emphasis is on the institution, the panchayat, and not just E. Gram Swaraj and the things that we do for their accounting and planning.
We also hooked up with the… Meteorological Department… and there are daily forecasts being generated for every gram panchayat. This people are able to see on their phones and all with the similar ability as they are able to see everything using Bhashini. So it’s a great enablement all around and it can only get better.
Absolutely. So, Amitji, over to you. How critical is open architecture ensuring long -term sustainability and avoiding vendor lock -in?
If I can take a minute and talk about the previous question also.
Sure, please go ahead.
Sir rightly mentioned that different ministries have got a different mandate. It’s not an apple to apple comparison. But see, you also have to see the panchayati raj, the main role of panchayati raj, what I understand is a mobilization. because they are not running major schemes on their own compared to others. And generally the best practices doesn’t have to be in form of technology or architecture only. The idea is that if you go down from top, there are two different ministries and if you go to the village, you will see the same infrastructure, same set of people are only working from both departments. So the idea is if one can do, others can also do. So there is a lot of learning in terms of method that how we could overcome, how could we mobilize, how we could implement some of these solutions.
And I am sure we know that RD and agriculture are also doing a lot of things, but their mandate is much bigger. But they can also take a lot of pride or learning from the success which we have. What was the second question? The second one was that how? Critical is open architecture in ensuring long -term sustainability and avoiding the window. So you must be hearing this word called sovereignty quite a lot, right, nowadays. So the whole idea of, you know, being sovereign in any part of the, you know, technology, be it defense, be it IT, be it any way, is the survivability, right? So the idea is despite, in spite any kind of, you know, geopolitical risk, we should survive.
Our system should run, right? So for that, generally people confuse sovereignty with also making India local, et cetera. So that’s not the case, right? We will always have some technology from outside. But we have to design in a way that it is kind of ready to shift, right? So either from a technology point of view, we have the interoperability, the standards which we have chosen, the models which we have chosen, the infrastructure which we can move around, and the teams which we can control, right? Right. So the data residency has to be within India and data is with us. So obviously if we have trained on one, we can train on another, something else also.
So the idea is also to look a little bit long term. See, what has happened that when we started, obviously, there were a lot of POCs. Nobody knew, right, how AI will behave. Still, we don’t know. Still, we don’t know, right? I mean, so obviously, that you have to start somewhere, right? And then you have to also ensure that in future, when we start with one use case, it becomes easy, right? When the department itself becomes fully AI enabled and we have 10 AI use cases running, then it becomes a problem, right? Problem of management. So that’s where I think we need to plan better for future so that, you know, we plan. I mean, it’s not that a use case is defined, then we found an easy method of procurement of infra or the model which I knew.
So going forward, I think there will be a platform approach, right? So where we have to think for future also that, okay, these AI cases are likely to come in future as well. Different kind of AI, right? DL. DL. DL. DL. DL. DL. DL. DL. DL. DL. DL. DL. DL. and accordingly we have to have open architecture like the way we did in a normal digital transformation. Even digital transformation, there used to be time where we created our own independent monolith applications. But now we are creating applications, you know, which are more API -based, can integrate with anybody, right? And futuristic, can scale our modular. So same concepts have to be used for AI
Well said. So I think adoption comes with responsibility and that’s what you are scaling at, looking at. Swalokhji, Sabha sir demonstrates how language AI can power grassroots governance. After Sabha sir’s success, what deeper integrations do you envision with Bhashini and what does the next phase of collaboration looks like? Let’s talk about that.
About 16 have already started providing all those common minimum services. So minimum se nahi chalega. We wanted more. So now we had like a model list, union set, if you will, of all the desirable services that were being delivered. And the ministry carried out an exercise through an expert committee. And we have a much bigger list now. So we are not satisfied with the minimum. Now we are working towards that. But I think that AI has great potential in helping us. Thank you. So service delivery is something people don’t know to expect. and we would like through and people are going to be speaking in any number of languages. I think the next step, my government is something that has always been very invested in providing services to making ease of living easier as it were and providing all manner of things.
Everything is finally a service. You need to look at a doctor. You need your road fixed. You need a street light to be working. You want the log water to be drained or something. She needs more attention than us. Okay, over to you. So people should come to expect. they should demand these services from their Gram Panchayats. There are mechanisms of doing that because Gram Panchayats don’t have a lot of resources in terms of manpower, in terms of people who are at their beck and call to carry out the activities that are flowing from the Charter. So there are systems in a lot of these villages. You have common service centres in some states. They have their own system of common service centres like UP, like Bapuji Seva Kendra in Karnataka, like Me Seva.
So we need to take that further and we need people to be able to talk and find out if a certain service that is available to them, can they avail it in their village? If they are to do that, what is the mechanism? And if they’ve already made an application, that what should be able to tell them that where that thing currently stands? so that is a very wide area like I said that there are a number of services we also learnt of a pilot that was carried out in Guwahati where the bus used to have a camera it used to drive through, capture all number of images and basis that it would assign issue labels to them as it were if there is a drain overflowing so it takes note of that if there is a pothole then it takes note of that and then it assigns it to all these agencies whose job it becomes now to fix that so not that but maybe we have a mobile interface called Meri Panchayat which ports a lot of information from E Gram Swaraj Meri Panchayat also has the capability of capturing images of the issue that is being reported I think the next step is that image it makes sense of the image and it assigns it to the necessary department.
There are people who are mapped whose job it is to carry it out and within a certain amount of time it doesn’t happen, then there is escalation. We need to go deeper into that system. That, I think, is the next frontier. And, of course, because it involves vocalization of your demands, so bhajani is absolutely critical in this. So when we say there is a long way to go, I think that phrase is no more relevant. It’s a short way, but not even a big journey, an intelligent journey to move
So India is building public digital infrastructure for AI at scale. So how do we balance scale with accountability and public trust? We have talked much about how we are building things. But let’s talk about the other side. And can India lead the world in population scale?
Of course it can. I am sure about that. But then multilingual AI for governance, when it comes, you would like to have a short -ended first. So one thing you all have to realize that whatever we do is a population scale and unparallel because of our size. So even our POCs exceed the kind of performance of European countries Our UP sir talked about UP 60 ,000 panchayats If you look at UP maybe it will be in top 10 country in terms of population and size. I think the world is vouching for us when it comes to the use cases So see if you look at that we have got that scale now. We have the experience behind us We did Aadhaar, we did UPI, we did Fastag, we did GST and we did Income Tax.
So now we have that confidence behind us that we can do anything of scale and with the same Prugal approach we will do 10 times cheaper than Western world and certainly not worse, better only. and also from last decade we have evolved right so for example the concept of privacy like dpdp act consent based usage like you know adhar brought so a lot of things have improved from a policy side of it now now once you have policies in place systems are easy because system themselves act as a rule you know once you have policies in place then you don’t need so much of human intervention or discretion so since we have done it since we have kind of you know done so much so now if you look at the very simple case bhashni i remember four five years back and i and amitabh used to i mean kind of debate also whether we need a bhashni okay right because we we had some of the google translate services so on for forth right but the idea is that i mean in the hindsight that was the right call right in future we have to have something called sovereignty word right we have we don’t have to depend on I mean we need to be frugal and we don’t want to use you know the applications which are very expensive from a taxpayer money point of view so similar things we have done a lot right so I think the next step for example if you look at roam around in AI summit you will see how many LLMs and SLMs we are building on our own right honorable ministers talked about five layers application I think we have ample talent to build applications LLMs we use open LLMs but we are developing our own and Basni also like one of the you know common infrastructure energy will take care right infra and chips anyway will have dependency but that’s the rest of the world also has a dependency right not that everybody has a rare earth and everybody is building chips so that way I believe that you know that and because we have that technical know how also I mean that’s our kind of bread and bread and butter nowadays right so we’ll be able to take the learnings from all these systems and we’ll move forward as of now we were a bit slow in last year or two because AI itself was new for everyone so we took some time but now I think from this year onwards we’ll really scale it up because we have tested the blood, we have seen the success and we will
sure, thank you for sharing that so as we come towards the closure of this conversation I would like to leave with the one final thought which is like if Panchayati Raj institutions are the foundation of democracy can AI when built on a public stack and powered by language inclusion become the strongest enabler of participatory governance in 21st century just closing thoughts from you both Alokji, would you
absolutely he was just telling you that that we’ve been able to do things at scale this thing about UP that I told you I wear it like a badge that to have done it in some place so and it’s not an easy ask because there are so many stakeholders they’ve got various kinds of issues of their own you’ve got to engage with them address those things and if my problem is well defined and if I know what kind of a thing is going to help me redress that like Bhashini did for us I think that what you said is going to come true because that is so being able to understand my problem and knowing what parts of the problem can be fixed in what manner using the various tools that are available that is the key and I it’s not an over simplification but good servant bad master so that is something that stays and it is not it’s not going to land you in the right places if you just let it go around like an animal.
But then if you know where to put it, what modules to be inserted, where, what has been used in the background. And so that would make you more confident. I’m not really an AI person, so I’m just speaking on the strength of what I have learned. And the experience thus far has been outstanding, partly because we’ve had a very good partner. But other than that, I am not, you know, I’m not throwing it all open out to AI. I don’t wear T -shirts saying I love AI or something. But I have a problem, and it needs fixing. And I need to be able to know what aspects of AI can help me fix that in the best possible manner.
And that’s my thing on
So like Sir said, you know, Sir is not an AI person, neither am I. So if you look at, you know, that… But he was transparent enough to share that. No, no. So look at that way that none of us were, right? Yes, exactly. Because if you’re talking about AI, I have been doing this, you know, digital transformation for public sector for over 20 years. Yeah. Obviously, there was no AI, even there was no DPI, DPG also, you know, what we kind of retrofitted with the names, right? Right. So if you look at the idea of Panchayati Raj itself is a participative governance, right? That people have to assemble in the Gram Sabha and decide on the money which they’re getting, how to spend and prioritize.
Absolutely. And if AI tools like Praman and Sabha Sar and, you know, Pancham can help that strengthen, what best, you know, you can expect from a participative government, from a democratization point of view. Yes. So I think this sometimes, you know, that technology becomes secondary. Yes. In my view, most of the time, right? The ideas have to be clear in terms of what you want to achieve. and what problem you want to solve, what scale you want to solve, what are the guardrails you have to kind of, you know, also put in place. So, for example, when we do AI, that it cannot be 100 % autonomous, right? Of course. And it cannot be 100 % human in the loop also.
Because if we have each and every transaction being, you know, approved by human in the loop, then it defeats the purpose of AI. And there is no AI, right? Then we are still living in the rule -based algorithms. Algorithms. So the idea of, you know, that AI will be that we also train, monitor, have the mechanism to take complaints, have the mechanism to perfectly, you know, kind of train it better so that we improve our accuracy. So that is how AI journey. So AI journey is slightly different from the previous digital transformation journey, which were more like a transactional systems, right? So that way, I think, if you look at currently also Sabasar, I think whatever I am hearing from people market teams also, So it is giving great accuracy, right, in terms of translation and summarization.
And I’m sure whatever there are little bit areas to improve, it will improve on its own. So we cannot stop it, right? So once we have boarded a flight, then we can only get down at where we have to, right? So I think future is bright. And also from a MOPR experience point of view, it will also, I’m sure, energize and motivate a lot many others. I can say with my experience that if MOPR can do in rural, we can use AI tools. There is no stopping for us as a nation. This is truly an achievement when it comes to MOPR with the government.
So you want to say anything regarding this, Alokji?
I thought of another application that works. That is something we’ve been working on, which was spatial development plans. Okay. we again engaged with a lot of panchayats that were close to the highways okay so typically if a panchayat is on a national highway close to a big city and have a population of 10 000 plus then you were eligible to participate in this program okay so there were 34 gp that we involved and we got the planning and architecture colleges to prepare spatial plans for them spatial plan would be futuristic it would zone and it would you know assign it would look into the future and see how this place was going to grow it would devise road networks or something and tell people what they would become over a period of time we had a conference with the with gram panchayats around bhopal bill and the people were so annoyed We don’t need a spatial plan.
Over a period of time, of course, we told them what it was going to be, but we had this epiphany that people need to be able to see what this spatial plan will help them become. And then we went into the next national conference. We had for each of these 34 spatial development plans a visualization. And we showed people that if you want to become this, you have to do this. And then there was greater enthusiasm. So the people on whom this plan is, who are going to be subjected to this plan, if I could use those words. So these people, if they’re not on board, there is no way you can carry it out. And that, I think, is wide open.
And we’ve had after that. But the entire state of Andhra Pradesh has gone ahead and said that all their planning is going to be spatial plans. So that is something that is amenable to AI tools. And a final thing that I remembered that lots of times we need to convey through audio video messages. He mentioned Pancham. So Pancham is a WhatsApp -based chatbot platform which allows us to have two -way conversation with all the sarpanchas and panchayat secretaries in the country. So all these people. And so if there is messaging that needs to be conveyed, if there are videos that need to be quickly created using AI tools, that is something that would be hugely effective in getting the message across in the quickest possible way.
Thank you.
Thank you so much for such endeavor. insights on the Grampanchayath and how things are working behind. Actually, I’m sure the audience was truly, they were unknown about what’s happening around and this conversation has given a new tangent to how we look at the rural development. Thank you so much Shri Alok and thank you so much Shri Amin for sharing these thoughts on Grampanchayath development. Thank you so much for this fireside chat. Thank you. I would like to call Ms. Deepika. to please felicitate Mr. Alok.
“This portal works in the English language.”<a href=”https://dig.watch/event/india-ai-impact-summit-2026/the-future-of-public-safety-ai-powered-citizen-centric-policing-in-india?diplo-deep-link-text=J…
Event“And imagine that a person from a panchayat is looking at the expenses page for his gram panchayat or her gram panchayat… by a click of a button, they are able to see it in their own language It was…
EventNag describes Bhashini’s work on 22 constitutionally recognized Indian languages, covering speech recognition, text‑to‑text translation and voice‑first farmer advisory services.
Event1. Ensure that all Central Administration services can be started online by 2016 and can be fully completed online by 2020. 2. Standardise the first-level assistance at Central Administration, ensurin…
Resource“The Ministry of Panchayati Raj (MOPR) was created in 2004 to empower Gram Panchayats and to nudge state governments toward legislation that makes local bodies truly self‑governing.”
The knowledge base states that the Ministry of Panchayati Raj was established in 2004 to empower gram panchayats and provide central coordination for rural local governance [S1].
“In 2019, a People’s Plan Campaign demonstration of the then‑English‑only eGram Swaraj portal at a Gram Sabha in Karnataka revealed that villagers could not understand the displayed information.”
Witnesses note that eGram Swaraj operated only in English and that during a 2019 rollout the language barrier was highlighted, prompting concerns about villagers’ comprehension [S7] and [S9].
“Bhashini is a language‑AI layer that translates portal content into the vernacular with a single click.”
Bhashini (spelled Bhasini in the source) is described as a software that translates messages into multiple Indian languages, enabling instant vernacular rendering of portal content [S8] and [S41].
“Bhashini’s journey began in 2023.”
The knowledge base records that Bhashini’s remarkable journey started in 2023, marking the launch of the initiative that year [S39].
“Bhashini rapidly scaled to support millions of daily inferences on a large GPU cluster.”
Additional context: by 2023-2024 Bhashini was handling about 15 million daily inferences on a 200-GPU system, illustrating the scale of the deployment beyond the report’s description [S39].
“The Bhashini plugin automatically applies translation across all pages of a website, enabling one‑click vernacular access.”
Demonstrations show that once integrated, the Bhashini plugin translates content across an entire site without further user action, supporting the report’s “single click” claim [S41].
The discussion shows strong convergence among the participants on four core themes: (1) language‑AI is essential for inclusive rural governance; (2) AI‑generated structured documentation (Sabha Sar) improves transparency and drives cultural change; (3) frugal, mobile‑phone‑first solutions coupled with stakeholder engagement enable rapid, large‑scale adoption; (4) balanced human‑in‑the‑loop oversight and clear guardrails are needed to sustain trust. These shared positions underline a high level of consensus on how AI should be designed, deployed and governed in India’s Panchayati Raj system.
High consensus – the speakers repeatedly reinforce each other’s points, indicating a unified policy direction that can accelerate scaling of AI‑enabled rural governance while maintaining inclusivity, accountability and sovereignty.
The speakers largely concur on the promise of language‑AI for inclusive rural governance, the utility of AI‑generated minutes, and the feasibility of low‑cost, phone‑based solutions. The principal disagreements centre on the extent of open, cross‑ministerial architecture and the balance between AI autonomy and human oversight.
Moderate – while consensus exists on goals and many benefits, divergent views on governance models (open architecture vs ministry‑specific robustness) and on AI control mechanisms could affect how quickly and uniformly AI solutions are rolled out across sectors.
The discussion was shaped by a series of pivotal insights that moved it from a descriptive overview of AI tools to a deeper exploration of why and how those tools succeed in rural India. Alok’s personal anecdote about language barriers sparked the central theme of vernacular AI, while his examples of repurposing drone data and spatial planning illustrated AI’s capacity to generate new public services. Amit’s emphasis on frugal, low‑cost implementation and open, modular architecture addressed practical adoption challenges and long‑term sustainability. The Uttar Pradesh onboarding story acted as a confidence‑boosting turning point, proving that large‑scale rollout is feasible. Together, these comments redirected the conversation toward scalability, inclusivity, governance, and the strategic design of AI infrastructure, culminating in a balanced view that acknowledges both transformative potential and the need for responsible oversight.
Disclaimer: This is not an official session record. DiploAI generates these resources from audiovisual recordings, and they are presented as-is, including potential errors. Due to logistical challenges, such as discrepancies in audio/video or transcripts, names may be misspelled. We strive for accuracy to the best of our ability.
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