In India, making a film/web series based on real events/people is an adventure sport. There’s no way it can criticise political powers without being selective. 

Real people/organisations depicted in the narrative need to sign off on permissions before one depicts them, which becomes trickier if the depiction is anything beyond heroic or idealistic. The legal departments comb through the script picking apart inane details; one might argue such films/shows are made by lawyers as much as filmmakers. No wonder most look timid and cauterised.

The additional obstacle for Robbie Grewal’s Made in India: A Titan Story, adapted from Vinay Kamath’s book, Titan: Inside India’s Most Successful Consumer Brand (2018), is that it’s also partly produced by Titan. 

How can such a show be expected to depict a company and its key personnel in an objective manner? Straying from the agreement might mean losing access to the Tata archives; a sizeable part of the show. 

It’s only fair for one to assume that they’re about to watch a corporate advertorial for the company and its white-washed legacy. At six episodes, with a runtime of nearly an hour each, Grewal’s show risks looking like a corporate advertorial in some episodes, while also coming across as a good-natured raconteur in some, talking about the ‘good old days’. 

However, one scene in the second episode made me sit up. Xerxes Desai (Jim Sarbh), an old hand in J.R.D. Tata (Naseeruddin Shah)’s tenure at the helm of Tata group, is casually told about “achhe din”. 

He responds to it with: “Achhe din aate nahi hai, unhe laana padhta hai (The good times don’t come by themselves, they need to be summoned through hard work).” It’s a cheeky and probably the only indicator that writers of this show are aware of contemporary........

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