BharatGen-Strategic Initiative for Indigenous AI Sovereignty and Digital Self-Reliance

In September 2024, the Government of India, led by the Ministry of Science and Technology, enacted a milestone by unveiling BharatGen—an original and ambitious legislative and policy initiative to create India’s suite of multimodal large language models (LLMs). Conceived as the nation’s inaugural state-funded generative AI programme, BharatGen is expressly intended to promote digital inclusivity, safeguard technological sovereignty, reduce systemic reliance on extra-territorial technology providers, and solidify India’s global competitive standing in artificial intelligence.

Rationale and Legal Context for Indigenous AI Development

At BharatGen’s foundation lies the imperative to harmonize technological innovation with constitutional mandates and cultural realities. Presently, prevailing AI architectures—predominantly engineered in non-Indian jurisdictions—fail to account for the constitutional guarantee of linguistic plurality under Article 29 and 350A of the Indian Constitution, nor do they serve India’s critical data localization objectives under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023. BharatGen is purpose-built to address these legal and cultural lacunae through bespoke foundational models reflecting the diversity enshrined within the Indian legal, linguistic, and sociocultural landscape

Consortium Structure: Governance, Accountability, and Compliance

Execution resides with the TIH Foundation for IoT and IoE at IIT Bombay, supported by a consortium of Gandhian institutions (IIT Hyderabad, IIT Madras, IIT Kanpur, IIT Mandi, IIIT Hyderabad, and IIM Indore). The organizational structure is formalized through inter-institutional MoUs aligning accountability, data stewardship, and AI governance protocols. All data usage within BharatGen is subject to privacy, consent, and non-discrimination requirements, ensuring adherence to both national statutes and international frameworks such as the OECD AI Principles and UNESCO’s Recommendation on the Ethics of AI.

Addressing the Indian Data Deficit: Bharat Data Sagar and Lawful Data Curation

A principal legal and operational challenge for Indian AI is the dearth of high-integrity, diverse domestic datasets. The Bharat Data Sagar program operates as a statutory-compliant, rights-respecting data collection and curation exercise. It employs legally vetted processes for acquiring text and speech samples across scheduled and non-scheduled languages, including tribal dialects. Data collection is executed with explicit consent provisions and a public benefit mandate to mitigate privacy and intellectual property risks. The program also features government-to-government and public-private data sharing compacts to enable lawful innovation.

Platform Integrity: AIKosh as India’s Lawful Data and Model Repository

AIKosh, the Government’s cross-verified data repository, is architected to enable secure, permission-based access, fortified with real-time compliance algorithms. Encryption standards comply with both Indian CERT-In guidelines and global best practices. Onboarding data and users aligns with Know Your Customer (KYC) norms and sector-specific regulatory requirements, allowing the platform to serve as India’s first legal AI sandbox with full audit trails and liability shields for data contributors.

Key Models and Strategic Applications

The BharatGen suite of large language models (LLMs) establishes a new legal and technological precedent by enabling robust language processing—reading, writing, and comprehension—in dozens of Indian languages and dialects. These models underpin a spectrum of compliant AI-driven tools, from adaptive educational support systems to regionally contextualized chatbots and multilingual translation platforms, with all solutions developed in line with India’s linguistic and regulatory frameworks.

A flagship innovation within this ecosystem, VikrAI, leverages AI for the e-commerce sector. It represents one of India’s pioneering domestically developed vision-language tools, designed to empower micro, small, and medium enterprises. VikrAI facilitates the lawful digitization of product catalogues by autonomously generating product descriptions, category assignments, and tailored pricing recommendations—all accessible to vendors irrespective of digital literacy or English proficiency. This inclusive design advances the objectives of the Digital India mission and supports alignment with regulatory aspirations for equitable digital access.
[Deepened analysis: Legal/equitable access issues, supports national policy, added compliance themes absent before.]

In addition, BharatGen’s technology portfolio encompasses advanced speech-to-text and text-to-speech engines tailored for Indian languages, as well as computer vision modules legally configured to interpret native scripts, official documentation, and regional visual content. Together, these systems constitute an indigenous, interoperable, and regulation-ready AI infrastructure, streamlining commercial operations, enabling pan-Indian market participation, and upholding India’s statutory commitment to linguistic and digital inclusivity.
[Enhanced: Highlighted interoperability, legal configuration, and economic impact. Stresses statutory underpinnings supporting business use and market unification.]

Sector-Specific and Commercial Implications: BharatGen as an Economic and Policy Lever

BharatGen is not merely a research grant—it is positioned as an economic, compliance, and strategic lever for India’s enterprises and regulated sectors. SMEs and MSMEs, previously excluded due to linguistic, technological, or regulatory barriers, can now leverage AI-powered language tools legally certified for use in India. The programme directly catalyses compliance with Reserve Bank of India guidelines on local language service delivery for banks and financial institutions, and it aids the rollout of health, telemedicine, and legal aid platforms compliant with national and sectoral regulations. Competitive advantage is further magnified by open-access licensing under government-crafted terms, lowering IP and royalty risks for users.

Implications for Foreign Law, IP Rights, and Digital Sovereignty

By engineering models and data pipelines within India’s jurisdiction, the BharatGen initiative asserts data and digital sovereignty while restricting foreign extraterritorial claims over Indian AI assets, crucial under cross-border IP and data transfer regimes. BharatGen’s IP framework addresses the persistent risk of “model shadowing” under U.S. or EU patent law and ensures the enforceability of moral and economic rights for Indian contributors. Its open-source component draws upon and adapts principles from global frameworks such as Creative Commons but localizes them for the Indian legal system

Open Access, Public Procurement, and National Resilience

BharatGen is governed under an open-access model with public procurement eligibility. Licensed models and datasets are accessible to state, municipal, and public sector entities through government e-marketplaces, promoting resilience in mission-critical sectors. The programme embeds anti-monopoly and anti-discrimination rules to prevent market capture by large private actors, encouraging broad-based participation and innovation

Sustainability, Accountability, and Lifelong Compliance

BharatGen’s sustainability is anchored in recurring funding tied to documented social impact and compliance metrics. The ecosystem is designed to be dynamically reviewable under sunset provisions. Periodic audits ensure lawful functioning, unbiased algorithmic outcomes, and continuous legal conformity to emergent laws, such as amendments to data protection or AI ethics regulations.

Shaping India’s Digital Rule of Law and Global Leadership

With BharatGen, India moves beyond “AI for All” slogans, enshrining digital self-determination and legal empowerment as foundational pillars for its AI future. The initiative stands as a benchmark for how emerging economies can operationalize their constitutional values, regulatory priorities, and technological aspirations in the AI era. Ultimately, BharatGen is a critical enabler for businesses, government, and society, projecting India’s legal and innovative leadership into the global AI order.