Multilingual Education and India

Language technology is getting a lot of attention these days but usually the focus is on the dominant languages.   I was pleasantly surprised that in a recent workshop organised by IIIT-Hyderabad, also the underserved languages were in focus. This is of course of interest for the multilingual education efforts in India as there is a significant shortage of support to create materials and tools for children that speak minority languages. IIIT-Hyderabad recently hosted a multi-day workshop focused on low-resource Indian languages, as noted by Prof. Sandeep K. Shukla . The institute organised Bahu Bhasa 2025 (6–8 Nov 2025), a major event that brought together technologists, linguists, community leaders and policy stakeholders to reimagine the future of Indian languages in the digital age ( Deccan Chronicle ). This mix of research and public dialogue connects language-technology efforts (Natural Language Processing – NLP, speech, language resources) to India’s broader educational goal...

At the recent International Mother Tongue Language Day, the use of technology was emphasised. Bloom Library and Storyweaver are two pieces of simple software which come to the rescue of educators, parents, and students who want to create books in their own language. It is good to note that, rather than competing with each other, they complement each other and host each other's books and resources on their websites. As many of you are already aware, there are two very useful online book-creation tools that are making enjoyable reading material available for children in many different languages. They are Storyweaver  from Pratham Books and Bloom Library   by SIL International. Both of these online libraries not only offer books in many languages but also allow one to create one’s own books and download them for future use. They also have a variety of  image libraries which can be used by someone creating a resource. 

  Kalika Bali’s talk on TED.com There is a lot of technology involved in producing educational materials. However, most language technology is focusing on majority languages while the minority languages stay behind. In a recent TED talk, a language technology enthusiast working with Microsoft, Kalika Bali, is talking about how this gap can be bridged.