At a recent ‘Career Day’ meet in Bangalore last week, I was asked by a young scientist from the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) why there were not enough people communicating science in India’s national language Hindi. I had a ready answer for that (I get that question a lot of times from well meaning souls). And the answer is: it makes sense when you ask the same question in the context of Chinese or Japanese or for countries where science is done in regional languages. In India, the language of science happens to be English, for historic reasons. And even if you passed out of a Hindi medium school (or for that matter in any other regional language) and wanted to pursue science, nine out of ten chances you would have to switch to English.  Read more