More people speak Javanese than Malay, Burmese or even Thai. Indeed 95 million people or fully 40% of Indonesia’s 265 million strong population are Javanese speakers. However, Javanese is not the national language of the Republic. That is Bahasa Indonesia, which is a variation of the Malay language. How did Javanese, the language of Indonesia’s largest ethnic group, fail to become the national language?

Gawing - an Iban/Christian boy - was nineteen years old when he first arrived in Johor back in 1993. He certainly never expected - just over a quarter of a century later - to be living and working in Johor Baru. Now working for an oil and gas company (a job that he enjoys immensely) and married with three children, he considers himself a true-blue, "Johorean".

Back in 2014 when Narendra Modi was first elected, he was supposed to transform the perennially under-performing Indian economy. Instead, five years on and after a deeply divisive election, India - according to a National Statistical Office (NSO) survey - is facing rising poverty, especially in the rural areas as well as an unprecedented fall in consumer spending - for the first time in over four decades.

Ma Ae first started work, (as a 20-year-old back in 2000), as a marketing employee for the Yellow Pages. She had just finished high school and needed to help her father support her two younger brothers. Two low-wage jobs later, she joined the hospitality industry, slogging away at a budget hotel while pursuing distance education. Then, in 2004, she moved to the Sedona Hotel, her first five-star establishment. She knew at once that this was what she wanted to do.