In this article, Aditi Jain explores the implications of the draft Scientific Social Responsibility policy, released by the Department of Science and Technology, India. Through conversations with experts, she addresses the reactions of scientists, the ongoing debate over the mandate and incentivization, the clarifications required and the policy’s role in creating careers.

Café Oikos, a volunteer-driven, not-for-profit initiative, is the brainchild of engineer-turned-ecologists Anisha Jayadevan and Shishir Rao. It is a free and open public event regularly held at Bengaluru bookstores or cafés wherein people from all walks of life can come to learn about ecology and conservation research directly from active scientists. In this article, Anisha writes about how Café Oikos came to be, and what it aims to achieve.

Located halfway across the world from each other, four dedicated researchers felt the acute lack of well-researched science stories in their mother tongue, Bengali, and decided to come together to fill this gap. The outcome of their efforts - Bigyan.org.in - was launched on National Science Day, 2014. Here is the story of their journey.

This is the first article in our new column series on science popularisation in Indian languages. The Language Project offers free video courses in synthetic biology in 26 different languages (9 of which are Indian), and is the brainchild of a group of undergraduate students from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras.