India Insight

The BSE Sensex ended above the 20,000 mark on Friday after gaining 2.6 percent in the last five trading sessions. The index has now risen for four straight weeks. Here are the top five Sensex gainers and losers of the week:

GAINERS

Tata Motors: The automaker’s stock surged 8.15 percent in the week ending May 10, making it the best Sensex performer. Though the stock is still flat in 2013, it has gained nearly 15 percent since April. However, Ambareesh Baliga of Edelweiss Financial Services advises caution: “Tata Motors’ overdependence on Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) to negate the Indian underperformance makes it a risky investment at this juncture especially in view of lower margins at JLR”

Hindalco: Shares of India’s largest aluminium producer surged 8 percent this week. The stock extended gains throughout the week after rising 3.5 percent on Monday, on expectations of better realizations after copper prices rose more than 6 percent last Friday.

ITC: Shares in India’s biggest cigarette maker ended the week with gains of 6.7 percent, after touching an all-time high on Friday. Investors have placed long positions in ITC futures, indicating they expect gains to continue.

Hero MotoCorp: This was another auto stock which was among the top five performers, gaining 5.9 percent for the week to end at 1705 rupees. The stock had fallen to 1434 rupees on April 15, but has gained nearly 19 percent since then. The company reported better-than-expected results in the last week of April, but sales growth has slowed amid rising competition, denting its market share.

(Any opinions expressed here are those of the author and not necessarily of Reuters)

For more than 30 years, Mike Pandey has been a man with a mission. In its special issue on Heroes of the Environment in 2009, Time magazine credited the maker of wildlife documentaries with efforts to protect “everything from whale sharks to elephants, vultures to medicinal plants.”

In 1994, Pandey became the first Asian film-maker to win the Wildscreen Panda Award, better known as the Green Oscar, for his film on the capture of wild elephants. He also won the award twice in the next decade.

New Delhi, India

By Mansi Thapliyal

Atika, 10, woke up early one morning in August 2008 and was sent by her mother to buy a few items from a nearby shop. She returned and told her mother she would prepare tea for her father before quickly going to use a communal toilet close to her house. She never returned.

Ambika was a feisty 15-year-old high school student who took wrestling classes. Her mother returned home from work late in the night on October 10, 2010. She woke up the next morning and found her daughter missing.

Atika and Ambika are among the thousands of children who go missing from India's streets, schools and homes every year.

(Any opinions expressed here are those of the author, and not necessarily those of Thomson Reuters Corp)

Are they parliamentarians, or do they just play ones on TV? After pushing through proposals on foreign investment in the retail and the aviation sector late last year, India’s elected representatives apparently have decided to get as little done as possible during the current session.

On television, it’s another matter. Newsroom studios appear to be the preferred forum for debating problems and legislation that normally would be the province of parliament. Those include recent demands by the coalition government’s prime opponent, the Bharatiya Janata Party, for the resignations of the prime minister, law minister and the railway minister over accusations that the government interfered with an investigation of improper allocation of coal mine licenses and certain other bribery allegations.

As India celebrates 100 years of cinema, we asked celebrities to name their favourite Indian film. It was a tough choice. After all, there are tens of thousands of films to choose from. How could they select only one? In the end, all our respondents sent in several choices, unable to pinpoint the one Indian film they thought was the best.

Fashion designer Ritu Kumar was closest to the brief, naming just two personal favourites. Her choices: “Umrao Jaan” and “Mughal-E-Azam“. Both films were in her words “classical for music, costumes and ethos.”

For writer Amish Tripathi, “Mughal-E-Azam“, “Guide” and “Sholay” reigned supreme in Bollywood. Pressed to reveal his all-time favourite, the author of the Shiva trilogy reluctantly chose the Dev Anand film based on R.K. Narayan’s novel.

Mumbai, India

By Danish Siddiqui

The Hindi film industry or Bollywood can make a star, a household name out of anyone overnight. It can bring instant money, fame and the fan-following of millions from across continents.

Bollywood is an addiction for many that attracts thousands of aspirants to the breeding grounds, the city of Mumbai, everyday. I was keen to look at this other side of the glamour world. The side that entails the struggle to enter the world of aspiring dreamers and their struggles to become a star.

There is no time limit to becoming a nationwide sensation, a star in Bollywood. As one of the aspirants told me it's a gamble you take, forgetting all your worries about the results.

(Any opinions expressed here are those of the author, and not necessarily those of Thomson Reuters Corp.)

Citizens First: those are the two words at the top of the Delhi Police department’s website. An alternative could be: “first come, first served.”

I called the stalker line after receiving some text messages and telephone calls that made me feel unsafe. The upshot: a dispatcher routed my call to three police stations, none of which have a record of the complaint. Furthermore, it will take several days to get back to me with the results of any investigation. This is happening when the police are under intense criticism for not doing enough to prevent rape, harassment and assault, not to mention reports of their views on women. This latest incident was not an inspiring episode.

It’s been a hundred years since the first Indian feature film “Raja Harishchandra” in 1913. Since then, Bollywood has made tens of thousands of films – good, bad and middling.

Tell us the movie that you feel is Bollywood‘s best. To help you make that choice, we have compiled a list of 100 films we have seen and loved, films that are sensitive and sensible in their own way and films that brought ‘larger than life’ into our living rooms.

Of course, lists like this are always subjective and biased and we’re sure many impressive films have been missed. In case we have not included the movie that you treasure the most, do share your views in the comments below.

(Any opinions expressed here are those of the author and not necessarily of Reuters)

Getting directors, producers and activists into a room to figure out Indian cinema’s connection to violence toward women, rape and crudeness in society can be like a family gathering. People shout, get angry and fail to solve fundamental problems because they can’t agree on anything.

The Siri Fort auditorium in New Delhi recently presented the latest forum for the debate. India’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting held a six-day festival there to celebrate 100 years of moviemaking, and there was little agreement on how much responsibility Bollywood and the film industry bear for the poor attitude toward women that many people evince. It was perhaps a more pressing discussion than usual, given the name of the three-day workshop, “Cut-Uncut,” which dealt with official censorship in India, the role of sex and violence in movies and the influence of films on society.