BIG PICTURE Fresh from the success of Chalo Dilli,which she has produced and acted in,Lara Dutta was the perfect candidate to debate the topic of Increasing Presence of Women in Bollywood,pertinent in a year that started off with No One Killed Jessica,a project spearheaded by the extremely talented Rani Mukerji and Vidya Balan. Giving her company were Subhash Ghai a mentor to leading ladies in the industry like Meenakshi Seshadri,Madhuri Dixit and Manisha Koirala,Manish Malhotra,who gave us the temptress Urmila in Rangeela,National Award winning director Bhavna Talwar and the talented crooner Shilpa Rao. Among other things the panelists agreed that,with a larger number of women as part of the workforce,women are now calling the shots on several fronts in the film industry. Any discrimination that exists today is driven more by commercial factors than the gender admitted Ghai. Dutta concurred saying that one has to be aware of the professional realities and work around them and even went on to say that things were far better for her generation of actors than they were,for those of preceding generations.
