IIT Jodhpur’s Landmark AI Push for Indian Languages and Heritage

India’s linguistic and cultural diversity poses unique challenges for technology. While English has seen rapid adoption in AI and language technologies, Indian languages are still underserved. To address this gap, IIT Jodhpur’s Vision, Language and Learning Group (VL2G), led by Prof. Anand Mishra, is pioneering indigenous AI tools that combine vision and language. These innovations aim to strengthen India’s digital future, cultural preservation, and skill development under the vision of India@2047.

Breaking Barriers in Indian Language Technologies

As part of the Government of India’s Bhashini project, IIT Jodhpur has created open-source APIs capable of recognizing and translating scene text in 13 Indian languages, including,

• Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Punjabi, Bengali, Assamese, Odia, Manipuri, Malayalam, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu.

Applications include

• Multilingual navigation (reading road signs, shop names).
• Real-time translation for travelers and students.
• Accessibility tools for billions of Indian users.

Preserving India’s Cultural Heritage through AI

Collaborating with Indira Gandhi National Center for the Arts (IGNCA) and TIH-iHUB Drishti, IIT Jodhpur is using deep learning for,

• Cleaning and restoring ancient manuscripts in Sanskrit, Pali, Telugu, and other languages.
• Developing OCR systems to digitize deteriorated texts.

Significance

• Protects India’s cultural heritage.
• Enables translations, comparative studies, and rediscovery of traditional knowledge.
• Video AI for Skills, Safety, and Society

In collaboration with Accenture Labs, IIT Jodhpur researchers are building advanced video AI models that can localize and track unseen objects using transformer networks.

Applications include,

• Automated skill assessments in education and training.
• Workplace safety monitoring in factories and construction sites.
• Surveillance and healthcare analytics for public welfare.

Vision for Inclusive Innovation

Prof. Anand Mishra emphasizes that the group’s mission is to develop robust, indigenous, and open-source AI technologies. The goal is not just to keep pace with global AI but to provide solutions rooted in India’s cultural and societal needs.

IIT Jodhpur pioneers AI for Indian languages, heritage preservation, and future skills, driving inclusive innovation under India’s Bhashini project and beyond.

Key Takeaways for Exam

• The team is working under Government of India’s flagship project “Bhashini”.
• Developed open-source scene text recognition APIs for 13 Indian languages.
• Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Punjabi, Bengali, Assamese, Odia, Manipuri, Malayalam, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu.