  The cross-correlations between price fluctuations of 201 frequently traded
stocks in the National Stock Exchange (NSE) of India are analyzed in this
paper. We use daily closing prices for the period 1996-2006, which coincides
with the period of rapid transformation of the market following liberalization.
The eigenvalue distribution of the cross-correlation matrix, $\mathbf{C}$, of
NSE is found to be similar to that of developed markets, such as the New York
Stock Exchange (NYSE): the majority of eigenvalues fall within the bounds
expected for a random matrix constructed from mutually uncorrelated time
series. Of the few largest eigenvalues that deviate from the bulk, the largest
is identified with market-wide movements. The intermediate eigenvalues that
occur between the largest and the bulk have been associated in NYSE with
specific business sectors with strong intra-group interactions. However, in the
Indian market, these deviating eigenvalues are comparatively very few and lie
much closer to the bulk. We propose that this is because of the relative lack
of distinct sector identity in the market, with the movement of stocks
dominantly influenced by the overall market trend. This is shown by explicit
construction of the interaction network in the market, first by generating the
minimum spanning tree from the unfiltered correlation matrix, and later, using
an improved method of generating the graph after filtering out the market mode
and random effects from the data. Both methods show, compared to developed
markets, the relative absence of clusters of co-moving stocks that belong to
the same business sector. This is consistent with the general belief that
emerging markets tend to be more correlated than developed markets.
