Both Chloe Zhao's film and many of the movies of China’s sixth generation explore two side of the same phenomenon: economic globalisation.

Much before iPhones and YouTube, a gaudy machine on our railway platforms provided entertainment and information. It’s all but gone, but a fortuitous meeting makes Pallavi Aiyar’s childhood spring to life.

There are several points still up for discussion before the India-Japan nuclear accord becomes a reality, including Japanese apprehensions on India misusing nuclear technology.

'The role of the foreign community in drawing attention to the health effects of air pollution was crucial in Beijing, as it would be in Delhi later.'

Children are trained to take the subway, run errands and to even make the journey to their school by themselves due to a widespread trust in its society.

Rising life expectancy and declining fertility in the country could pose drastic social and economic effects if they are not adequately addressed.

People of mixed descent, like Priyanka Yoshikawa, remain an anomaly in Japan, where racial purity is reinforced by a culture of conformity that can make being, or looking, different unusually difficult.

For the better part of the last decade, Noor Huda Ismail – a disarming and bespectacled polymath – has attempted to identify and rehabilitate former terrorists, many of whom attended the same school as himself.

India and Indonesia are civilisational cousins yet neither Indians nor Indonesians are cognizant of their historical closeness – in matters of language, culture, religion and world view.

Unless Jokowi is able to translate some of his rhetoric into action soon, his election may go down in history as important only for its symbolism. And the next time round Indonesians may decide that symbolism alone is not enough.