To answer your question as it is written: we _do_ use the same term in India. The reason why your interview candidates are not able to respond is because this term isn\'t taught in college. Personally, I think it not important to know this term in order to be a good programmer (especially not with the chutku work that gets shipped to India). This term takes less than a minute to understand, and any programmer who has written a simple multi threaded application has thought through a related problem at some point. My 0.02 INR: I think your intention in asking this question is to figure out if your candidate is familiar with (or can anticipate) problems that can creep into a 'complicated' app. If your candidate does not understand 'race condition', Explain the concept and ask your candidate to respond with an example where this would be a problem in a program.