Is it just me or has the PR agency for the Tata Group realised the power of Indian-style social media, where easy-on-facts, badly-made, awkwardly-worded, and haphazardly-designed WhatsApp forwards find their way to Facebook and LinkedIn where they get reactions like ‘Jai Hind’ and ‘True Patriot’ and ‘Salute’ along with tens of thousands of likes, and is using this to polish up Ratan Tata’s image? Or is it the lack of genuine Indian heroes that is driving this? Or is it something else?

I am sceptical of the serendipity explanation because of what is happening to the Tata Group companies’ share prices in recent times. I mean, this is too much of a coincidence.

Was this a build-up for the cheap purchase of Air India? Or is he angling for the next President of India? I am intrigued.

Remember that satire video in which a young man makes a meme for ayurvedic samosas? These remind me of those. Like a giant joke someone’s played on everyone. Except, that someone seems to be a PR agency.

Also, for some strange reason, people call him ‘Sir Ratan Tata, which was in fact the current Ratan Tata’s grandfather. Why? Perhaps because there are some charitable institutions named after him (the knighted one) and Indians just like to put ‘Sir’ everywhere while speaking about celebrities, in this case as a prefix!

While I am not sure where this began, if you wonder how seemingly educated and well-read, well-travelled people fall for this kind of crap, I had a theory about this long ago. Tell me what you think.

P.S: The title was written by me as such. It is a joke. I am not passing off articles written by a PR agency as my own. Because given how low my popularity is and how much money I am making off this (zero), any supposed PR agency that I have hired must suck big time. Unlike the one Tata hired. 😉