Which country prints banknotes in the most languages?

India. A rupee note carries the denomination in seventeen languages - Hindi and English on the front, and fifteen more on the back panel, from Assamese to Urdu. It is a piece of constitutional design rather than decoration: India recognises 22 scheduled languages and has no single national one.

The absence is deliberate and was hard-won. Attempts to make Hindi the sole official language provoked serious unrest in the south in the 1960s, including deaths, and the compromise that emerged keeps English as an associate official language indefinitely - which is why English persists in Indian courts and administration long after independence. It is the neutral option rather than the imperial leftover.

The most disruptive thing ever done to those notes came in 2016, when the government announced with four hours' notice that the 500 and 1,000 rupee notes - about 86 per cent of the cash in circulation - would cease to be legal tender. The stated aim was to destroy undeclared wealth held in cash. Almost all of the money came back into the banking system, which suggests it did not do that, and it caused enormous hardship in an economy where most transactions were cash and many people had no bank account.