India, Dec. 10 -- When a technologist who sold two million copies of a computer textbook in Hindi says that India's next big skill is language, it demands attention. For Santosh Choubey, Chancellor of Rabindranath Tagore University (RNTU), Indian languages are no longer just cultural identity markers - they are career accelerators in a global economy transformed by AI.

"Everyone talks about IT skills," he says, "but there is a thing called language skills. And careers are emerging where both go together." It is a simple formula but a powerful one: skills + language.

Choubey has watched the Indian education system from both sides - as a social entrepreneur working with rural youth across various states, and as a pioneer of IT education t...