Toward Indigenous AI: A Critical Analysis of BharatGen’s Role in Data Sovereignty and Language Equity

This study examines BharatGen, a government-backed initiative to develop India's own large language model, as a transformative step towards indigenous artificial intelligence. The initiative aims to address concerns over data sovereignty and underrepresentation of non-English language landscape dominated by global language models. BharatGen's role is to enhance national control over digital data and promote language equity across India's diverse linguistic spectrum. The study explores the strategic significance of BharatGen in reducing dependence on external AI ecosystems and its alignment with India's AI policy objectives. The study also analyzes the challenges and opportunities associated with BharatGen's deployment. The initiative is vital not only for technological self-reliance but also for preserving cultural identity and ensuring linguistic inclusivity in the evolving global AI ecosystem. BharatGen is a step towards indigenous AI, promoting multilingual AI, and Indian language technologies. The initiative is also significant for digital inclusion, multimodal language models, ethical AI, AI for low-resource languages, AI localization, sovereign AI infrastructure, and national AI strategy. Overall, BharatGen is a critical step towards reducing dependence on external AI ecosystems and promoting language equity in India. The initiative has the potential to promote cultural identity and linguistic inclusivity in the evolving global AI ecosystem.