Union HRD Minister Launches Bharatavani Portal
Date : 25th May 2016

Press Information Bureau
Government of India
Ministry of Human Resource Development

Union HRD Minister Launches Bharatavani Portal
Bharatavani Becomes the Largest Online Repository of Dictionaries in India on its Very First Day

The Union HRD Minister, Smt Smriti Zubin Iani launched the multilingual knowledge portal www.bharatvani.in at Lucknow today. While launching the app the Minister said that under the Prime Minister Shri Modi’s Digital India Mission, Bharatavani App will perform the task of bringing about digital revolution in the county. The Government’s mission is to showcase the Indian culture and heritage to the world through the medium of technology.

This project is in line with the HRD Ministry’s efforts to not only ensure universalization of education but also towards creation of a knowledge society in the digital age. The Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL), Mysuru is implementing this ambitious project of MHRD.

One Point language resource : Bharatavani is the first knowledge portal of its kind in India which focuses on becoming a single point source for multiple language learning, content and technology. Given India’s diversity, Bharatavani is an attempt to bring the people of India under one portal, its goal being to bridge the Digital and language divide, with the idea to publish as well as involve people in the Open Knowledge movement.

Window to language diversity: Government of India with the launch of this multilingual portal reiterates its commitment to the protection, preservation and inclusion of all Indian languages through technological development without discrimination. India’s diversity includes a treasure trove of knowledge and indigenous culture and the Government will take all measures required to develop the spread of Indian languages across communities and cultures.

Fostering National Integration: By its very nature, Bharatavani aims to foster national integration by emphasizing on multilingual and cross-lingual learning tools and technologies. Many cross-lingual grammar books, learning courses, will not only enable learning of languages but their transliteration will enable us to learn another language instantly. This can be experienced by way of the Bharatavani App, which has been so designed to enable users to read any language in any script through any language interface.

Catalyst to Language Technology Development Technology Development for Indian Languages will be made much easier with Bharatavani turnout to be India’s largest language Corpus. Digitization of hundreds of multilingual, multi-topic dictionaries, will provide Bharatavani a massive data set of linguistic terminologies, thereby leveraging research and development. Bharatavani aims to establish itself as a single point online window to knowledge in and about Indian Languages, dictionaries, language IT tools and textbooks.

Bharatavani Multi-lingual App: Unique multiple source of worlds

Alongwith the Bharatavani portal, MHRD has also launched the Bharatavani Multi-lingual App called Bharatavani. This App will enable users to search for one language text in another language as well as get meanings in different languages. Currently the App has 35 multilingual Dictionaries and MHRD aims to extend it to 250 dictionaries in a years time. This App, on the day of its launch becomes India’s first and largest multilingual dictionary. Our endeavour is to make it the world’s biggest online multilingual dictionary source.

Salient features : Bharatavani makes available knowledge already published by Government and publicly funded institutions all over the country and puts its across for free and fair public usage, by deploying a robust, interactive, user friendly web tools. Its content is protected by fair usage clauses under the Indian Copyright Act.

The Bharatavani Portal would publish the content in the following main sections:
1. Paa Thyapustaka Kosha : Textbooks by various authorities
2. Jnana Kosha : Encyclopedic Knowledge base in all languages
3. Shabda Kosha: Dictionaries, Glossaries, Terminologies,
4. Bhasha Kosha: Language learning books
5. Suchanaa Praudyogikii Kosha : It tools ( right now linked to TDIL)
6. Bahumaadhyama Kosha: Multimedia content

Significantly, more than 130 Dictionaries, Glossaries and Terminology books have been posted on the web portal. These dictionaries are available in text and PDF formats.

Many institutions both at National and State level have declared their support to this initiative and have already signed MOUs with Bharatavani. All content in print and other formats will be completely digitized and put onto the portal in the form of searchable text. The portal has been launched in 22 scheduled languages, which eventually will be extended to 100 more languages