Meghalaya's Voice-Based AI Agent Wins “AI for Good Hackathon” at Harvard

In a significant recognition for Meghalaya, a team of m Master’s candidates from the Harvard Kennedy School has secured first place at the prestigious “AI for Good Hackathon,” organised by the Centre for International Development at Harvard University, the Shillong Times reported.

Their winning project, MEGHA — short for Meghalaya E-Governance Human-Centred Assistance — is an innovative, toll-free, voice-based AI agent designed to bridge the gap between rural citizens and government schemes.

MEGHA empowers users by offering eligibility checks, listing required documents, and providing step-by-step guidance through government processes. Every response is anchored in verified official documents, and personal data is captured only with explicit consent, ensuring user trust and transparency.

The project aims to make government services more accessible to rural communities, particularly those with limited digital literacy. Additionally, MEGHA sends brief call summaries to both citizens and government officials, while anonymized interaction data helps inform the design of more inclusive policies.

“MEGHA was born from the conviction that AI can bridge the gap between rural citizens and their entitlements,” said Dr. Aarushi Jain, Policy Director at the Indian School of Business and a member of the winning team.

The team included Dr. Aarushi Jain, Manish Maheshwari (General Partner & India Head, BAT VC), Mohammed Y Safirulla K (IAS Officer), Ashish Tiwari (IPS Officer), and Manudev Jain (IRS Officer).

Over an intense eight-hour competition, multidisciplinary teams from Harvard and MIT built functional prototypes using platforms like voDev, Replit, Jotform AI Agent Builder, and PingPong. Competing projects ranged from alumni career development platforms to AI-powered emergency response systems.

The team now hopes to collaborate with the Meghalaya government to pilot MEGHA, bringing their vision of inclusive, citizen-focused governance to life.