When engineers in Silicon Valley were racing to build the world’s most powerful AI chatbot, no one warned them that Indian bureaucracy would one day remake it in its own image.

Like any good official, government chatbots these days answer questions with files.

Take Asksarkar, a government chatbot offering “authentic information from government and verified sources”. Ask simple questions like “I want to create a startup. What government schemes can I avail?” and it returns a list featuring Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana and Swachh Bharat Mission. Basically, everything under the sun except for startups. Ask about AI policies, and it offers a few links. The first leads to a 170-page PDF, the second to the Wikipedia page of the US’ Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, and the third to the IndiaAI Mission website. 

Then, there’s Askdisha, the Ministry of Railways’ chatbot. Ask it to book a ticket, and it simply takes you to a page identical to ticketing-and-tourism body IRCTC’s portal, leaving you to scroll and select manually. Not to mention that both these services can only be viewed in mobile-phone width even on a full-desktop screen.

This is because AI use within the Indian government is still in its awkward adolescence.