Well we all know that it has been an unfortunate incident that happened and one of India’s greatest and youngest leaders - Pramod Mahajan passed away from the bullet of his own younger brother. Like many I was one of those who remained glued on the TV screens and wished that Pramod could somehow make it through. Sadly he didn’t. Well, the question I wanted to ask now is what should the younger brother - Pravin Mahajan - currently lodged in jail and fighting his case, should do?

We are not taking any side with anyone. Nor are we making any insult to the political leader who passed away. But this is one good case for PR professionals to ponder upon. Just for the sake of challenging ourselves, let’s say we are the PR managers of Pravin. What do we do now? It’s a crisis management situation to die for.

The lawyer of Pravin pleaded that his client suffered from temporary insanity but this didn’t seem to have convinced anyone from the day of the shooting itself, leave alone the court judge. I suppose what Pravin said about his brother not treating him well and he was very angry against his elder brother seemed to have little bit more convincing effect. Maybe he should stick with it.

We read in the newspapers that Pravin was unmoved when he heard the news of the death of his brother. When I read that, I wonder that his grudge against his brother could be so strong. Was Pravin saying the truth after all? Did his brother treat him so bad? If he could instill these questions to a layman reader who doesn’t know much about the Mahajan family or politics, maybe this stance is better than saying he suffered from temporary insanity. We are not talking the legal angle here but the general image.

What should he do now? Let me quote an example. As kids, suppose we were really angry and wanted to vent our frustrations, we would throw a tantrum in the house. Our parents would have kept quite and tried to cajole us for some time. But if we didn’t relent and continue and somehow in the process ended up doing something really undoing- like hurting our siblings, parents, or breaking the TV- then our parents would have left us alone, not talked to us, or scolded us more. What we could have done in such a situation? We didn’t really hate our parents, our siblings or wanted to break household property. We just wanted a little bit more attention from our loved ones but the situation got out of control.

If we were accommodating children, we could have just said sorry, begged for our parents’ forgiveness and did our best to rectify the damage. But if we were really adamant, we wouldn’t feel sorry and continue doing our way, satisfied of having a good tantrum. So the question is whether Pravin acting like an adamant kid now?

We know that there is no use faking anything without true repentance and sincerity. Even as PR managers, we shouldn’t even be thinking of making Pravin do some great soul-searching media interview right now to narrate his side of the story. It could backfire big time. What he could do is take his time to look inwards. Then when he’s ready, visit a temple and pray for the forgiveness of his brother and his family. Then he should think more of what could he do for his sister-in-law, his nephew and niece. Then that would be his PR perhaps.

Read all of Hobbit’s posts - 20, 19, 18, 17, 16, 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1,
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