Has Indian Cinema missed its mark at Cannes?

Irrfan Khan in a scene from “The Lunchbox”.

Debutante Indian director Ritesh Batra's film “The Lunchbox”, depicting a gentle romance between a neglected young housewife and a middle-aged widower, has won the Viewers' Choice award on the sidelines of the 66th Cannes Film Festival.
Starring Irrfan Khan, Nawazuddin Siddique and Nimrat Kaur, the film portrays the story of romance between a widowed Catholic accountant (played by Irrfan) and a housewife, when the lunch she sends to her husband is mistakenly delivered by Mumbai's famous “Dabbawala” -- people who ferry lunch boxes from home to offices with unfailing regularity and immaculate timing, day in day out.
The film is an international collaboration between Germany, France and India and not in the usual song-and-dance Bollywood format.
Meanwhile, a debate is raging in Indian film circles whether the Indian presence in Cannes festival has in any way helped in raising the profile of present-day Indian cinema in its centenary year.
There is general agreement that India, for all its rich and diverse film industry, was represented in Cannes this year by just four films that saw only one individual —Anurag Kashyap — hogging the limelight. The films were “Monsoon Shootout”, “The Lunchbox”, “Bombay Producer” and “Ugly” -- which had Kashyap either as director, producer or co-producer. However, not a single film has set Cannes abuzz in a manner that would make the modern Indian cinema count internationally.
The question that is being asked is whether this kind of representation in Cannes will help truly independent filmmaking in India? True, Bollywood too has a clutch of young filmmakers who are combing the mainstream commercial cinema's language and bits and pieces of art house elements, though the result is often a hotchpotch. There are better such films being made in other languages of India, particularly in Bengali -- which were not to be seen in Cannes.
That being so, the focus -- particularly of Indian media -- was more on individuals —Amitabh Bachchan appearing in a blink-and-miss role in Baz Luhrmann-directed “The Great Gasby”, Aishwarya Rai, Vidya Balan, Sonam Kapur, Freida Pinto, Mallika Sherawat and Priyanka Chopra walking the red carpet and a critical appraisal of the outfits they were wearing on the occasion.