BHASHINI Brings AI to India’s Maps with Survey of India Partnership

Beyond digitisation, the initiative strengthens audio-based documentation of place names, preserving correct pronunciation and regional linguistic variations.

In a major boost to AI-powered geospatial governance, the Digital India BHASHINI Division (DIBD) under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Survey of India (SoI) to digitise and standardise India’s geographical place names using advanced speech and language technologies.

The MoU, signed on 20 January 2026, marks a first-of-its-kind integration of language AI with national geospatial infrastructure, enabling large-scale, multilingual and standardised toponymic datasets aligned with the National Geospatial Policy, 2022.

AI Meets India’s Linguistic and Geographic Diversity

As India’s national nodal agency for geographical name standardisation, the Survey of India conducts extensive field surveys, collecting place names in local and regional languages—often as audio recordings to capture authentic pronunciation and usage.

Under the new collaboration, BHASHINI’s AI stack—including automatic speech recognition (ASR), language processing, and validation workflows—will be deployed to convert these audio recordings into structured, high-quality digital text. The initiative will support the creation of a validated Toponymy Database covering over 16 lakh locations across India.

Powering the National Geographical Name Information System

A key outcome of the partnership will be accelerated development of the National Geographical Name Information System (NGNIS). BHASHINI’s tools will enable efficient transcription of field-collected audio into:

• Local language scripts

• Devanagari

• Roman and other standard formats

This ensures consistency and accuracy across national maps, digital governance platforms, and public information systems.

By embedding AI-driven language normalisation and validation, the collaboration significantly improves the speed, scale, and reliability of toponym data processing—an area traditionally dependent on manual workflows.

Preserving Pronunciation, Standardising at Scale

Beyond digitisation, the initiative strengthens audio-based documentation of place names, preserving correct pronunciation and regional linguistic variations. These datasets will be systematically standardised in line with:

• The Survey of India Toponymy Manual

• Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) codes of practice

The result is a trusted, authoritative source of place names for Open Series Maps, disaster response systems, infrastructure planning tools, and citizen-facing digital services.

Language AI as Core Digital Infrastructure

Through this MoU, BHASHINI contributes its end-to-end language AI portfolio—from data creation and annotation to validation pipelines—enabling large-scale conversion of spoken language into high-value geospatial datasets.

The partnership reflects BHASHINI’s broader strategy of embedding language technologies into India’s Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI), where linguistic precision is essential for governance, inclusion, and decision-making.

A Call to Geospatial and AI Innovators

By fusing speech AI, geospatial data, and indigenous language technologies, the collaboration opens new opportunities for geospatial startups, AI researchers, mapping platforms, GovTech providers, and disaster-tech innovators to build on standardised, multilingual location data.

As India scales its digital and geospatial ambitions, the BHASHINI–Survey of India partnership signals a clear shift: future-ready maps will be AI-enabled, multilingual, and rooted in India’s linguistic realities.