Dehradun: In a landmark move to protect Uttarakhand’s linguistic legacy and bring it onto digital stages, Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami inaugurated a voice‑collection portal for Garhwali, Kumaoni and Jaunsari on Thursday at the Chief Minister’s Camp Office. The portal, built by the AI Strategic Engineering (AiSE) Foundation under its ‘Bhasha AI’ programme, kicked off with a short Kumaoni clip recorded by the CM himself.
Marrying Tradition with Technology
Speaking at the event, the chief minister highlighted that regional languages are the soul of the state’s identity. He urged the use of cutting‑edge technology to nurture and disseminate these tongues, noting that as artificial intelligence spreads, it must be trained to understand and generate Uttarakhand’s diverse speech patterns.
Bridging the Rural‑Digital Divide
Dhami stressed that the portal is designed to help villagers and remote communities receive government information in their mother tongue and voice their concerns more naturally. For AI to serve this purpose, it needs to recognise local vocabularies, pronunciations and the subtle variations that exist across the hills.
Collecting Voices, Preserving Nuances
The minister explained that the project goes beyond a simple word list. It gathers correct pronunciations, dialectal inflections and multiple speaking styles, ensuring that AI models can interpret and respond accurately in Garhwali, Kumaoni and Jaunsari.
He added that the same word may sound different from one valley to another, and that a robust, crowd‑sourced voice bank will enable AI to capture these regional flavours.
Looking Ahead
Confident about the portal’s impact, Dhami said it will not only safeguard the languages but also link future generations with Uttarakhand’s folk arts, music and traditions. He extended heartfelt thanks to everyone involved.
Padma Shri award‑winning folk singer Pritam Bhartwan, present at the ceremony, reminded the audience that these languages carry the essence of local folk life, songs, Jagar rituals and cultural practices. He pledged the Jagar Academy’s support to maintain authenticity and proper pronunciation.
Sachidanand Semwal, founder of the AiSE Foundation, explained that ‘Bhasha AI’ is actively collecting lexical items and voice samples from the three languages, with the long‑term goal of enabling AI‑driven communication in them.
Other dignitaries—including Shakti Prasad Bhatt, Gajendra Nautiyal, Anirudh Raithwan, Nidhi Semwal, Anil Godiyal, Dr J.K. Pandey and Dev Raturi—joined the launch.
