metagaonFor anyone who would rather ask than read
Ask it out loud. In your own language.
Two things stop a household using any of this: not being able to read the screen, and not knowing the thing was possible at all. Sevak answers both — a question asked out loud, in the language it was asked in, about the farm, a scheme, a school, a business or the app itself.
What it actually is
A household holds a button and speaks. Sevak understands the question, looks the answer up for itself — your own orders, the shops that are open, the panchang, what a scheme asks for — and answers in the language it was asked in. Nobody types anything and nobody reads a menu.
It ships in Hindi, on models that exist today. Magahi and Bhojpuri speakers in Nalanda read and understand Hindi — the gap is warmth, not comprehension — so waiting for a Magahi model would have postponed every benefit by a year for a difference that improves a little at a time.
What happens when you ask
- 01
You speak
In any of fourteen languages. Hindi is the default, and the right choice for a Magahi or Bhojpuri speaker.
- 02
It looks things up
Against your own records and the public market — never another household's. It is told never to state a figure it has not just read.
- 03
It answers
In the language you used, out loud if you want it out loud.
- 04
If it would change something, you tap
Sevak never places an order itself. It draws a card describing what it would do, and nothing happens until a person taps it.
What it will talk about
Three subjects it answers. Four it will not answer and will point you at a person instead — and the difference is set deliberately, not by what the model happens to know.
Farming — it answers
Sowing, water, what a crop is fetching, what the roads are like before you set out.
Starting something — it answers
What a shop, a kitchen or a workshop needs, and what selling through Metagaon costs.
The day's panchang — it answers
Tithi, nakshatra and rahu kaal are arithmetic, so it computes them. It will not name an auspicious time: that belongs to a pandit.
Health — it refers
It will not answer a medical question at all. It says so and offers a doctor for ₹50. This one cannot be switched on.
Schemes and papers — it refers
A wrong answer about a deadline or a document costs a household a day at the block office, so it points at the Sahayak who knows.
School, and women's questions — it refers
Same reason. These reach a person in the panchayat rather than a paragraph from a model.
The corpus, and why we are building it
Magahi has tens of millions of speakers and almost no machine-readable speech. The same is true of most of what is spoken between Patna and the border. A model cannot learn a language nobody has recorded, and nobody records a language that has no market — which is how a language ends up locked out of every tool built in the next ten years.
So the Village tab in the app asks for it. A sentence appears, written to be said a particular way to a particular person — the same words warm are a welcome and flat are an accusation, and speaking to an elder is different grammar rather than the same grammar more politely. Somebody reads it aloud and is paid for it in their own wallet, which spends on a delivery they were going to make anyway.
What the corpus holds
Not a word list. Every sentence carries who it is said to and how it is said, because that is the part a model cannot guess.
| Sentences | 1,434 | Six subjects at 150 each, and 534 of ordinary conversation |
| Ways one can be said | 6 | Neutral, happy, worried, questioning, sad, angry — authored onto the sentence and performed |
| Who it is said to | Recorded | Speaking to an elder is different grammar, not the same grammar more politely |
| Languages Sevak takes | 14 | Hindi by default, and the right choice for a Magahi or Bhojpuri speaker |
Ask for it where you live.
The block where the most households ask is the block that opens next, and that is as true of Sevak as of everything else.