Tripura becoming the first state in the Northeast region to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with Digital India The Bhashini Division (DIBD) of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) to help citizens overcome language barriers in the e-governance ecosystem is good news. Bhashini is an artificial intelligence (AI)-based translation tool that facilitates real-time translation, speech-to-text, text-to-speech, and voice-to-voice translation between 22 regional languages and English. Successful integration of regional languages in e-governance is critical to increasing the participation of more citizens in digital governance. Bhashini, using voice as a medium, also addresses the literacy divides while bridging the digital divide. The language barrier has been posing a great challenge in e-governance in the country, as most online services are available in English, and it becomes difficult for non-English speakers to access various government services on their own. Dependence on others to access the online services comes in their way, becoming an active participant in e-governance. A large section of citizens remaining passive participants has created hurdles in making the e-governance ecosystem in the country robust and dynamic. Being a crowdsourcing initiative, Bhashini requires the wide participation of citizen volunteers to build a strong multilingual dataset for flawless and seamless translation. Under the larger initiative, the crowdsourcing of language inputs, which has been named Bhasa Daan, urges citizens to actively participate in the four components of Suno India (listening), Bolo India (speaking), Likho India (writing), and validating the text seen. MeitY urges people to enrich their language by typing the audio he/she hears or by validating the text transcribed by others; enrich their language by donating their voice through the recording of sentences or validating the audio recorded by others; contribute by translating the prompted text or validate the translations contributed by others; and type the text seen or label the image and validate image text contributed by others. A key advantage of building the multilingual dataset will be the creation of an open-source repository. Apart from building the national platform for strengthening e-governance in regional languages, Bhashini also aims to increase regional language content on the Internet, which will go a long way in making the Internet more accessible for regional language speakers. States playing a key role in popularising Bhashini’s mission and vision will be crucial to achieving the objectives. Communities speaking regional languages shouldering upon themselves the responsibility of contributing maximum translated content will be crucial for determining the quality of the digital footprint of their own language. More translated content means more seamless access to the internet in one’s language. Digital governance is highly effective in rooting out corruption by ensuring more transparency in governance. Direct Benefit The transfer of cash payouts to beneficiaries of various government schemes through government portals empowers citizens, apart from audit officials and monitoring and evaluation agencies, to track the utilisation of taxpayer’s money. The successful rolling out of the system has weeded out the middlemen, who used to pocket the lion’s share of disbursed funds fraudulently by producing fake lists of beneficiaries. E-governance has allowed citizens to peruse the official list of beneficiaries and confirm their bank accounts for receiving the amount sanctioned by the government. The transfer of amounts now happens in bulk simultaneously at the click of a mouse, which has brought an end to the requirement of beneficiaries frequenting government offices to follow up on the disbursement of the amount through bank cheques. Empowering the citizens to access these online services in regional languages will bring more transparency and rule out any misguidance by any corrupt official to exploit them by taking undue advantage of the language barrier in accessing the services and understanding the official notification or order. Enrichment of regional language content on the internet will also go a long way in improving education and bridging the divide between English medium and vernacular medium schools. It will unlock the vast knowledge repository available on the internet for vernacular medium students. This, however, requires more dedication by community volunteers of regional languages to contribute maximum content in their languages to improve automatic and multilingual speech-to-text, text-to-speech, and voice-to-voice translation. The Northeast region is a mosaic of several hundred language and dialect speakers. Future development of Bhasini initiatives focusing on languages spoken by different communities but not included in the list of 22 Indian scheduled languages will be crucial for making it more inclusive. For oral languages without a script, their voice-to-voice translation can be a viable option to help speakers of these languages to access online services in their language. This will, however, require more research support from the central and state governments. Successful operationalisation of the MoU with DIBD by Tripura will encourage regional language speakers across the region to leverage digital innovation to become active participants in e-governance. Overcoming language barriers in digital governance will also strengthen grassroots democracy in the region.