At the Times of India, where I began my career in business journalism in early 1992, we were called “commerce desk”.

The description emanated from the obsolete pre-liberalisation context when even a top newspaper would have only two-three semi-retired folks tracking India’s economic story; one dedicated to reprinting stock quotes from a list telexed by Bombay Stock Exchange, the other left to do a cut-and-paste job of what companies had to say about themselves.

Somewhere around the time Manmohan Singh read his defining speech in 1991, the TOI’s “commerce pages” came to be rechristened as “Business Times.” Others revamped similarly. Names of CEOs started getting printed without the sub-editor worrying whether she’s giving them publicity! Publications like Business Today photographed them larger than life. New business channels followed. Context: When Ratan Tata had ascended the Tata Sons throne in 1991, the TOI business editor devoted the entire business page to his Q&A; but not before the old guard whispered that the paper had plugged for Tatas!

Today, Mr Tata would make front-page anywhere without a problem. His latest whine about the withering India Story has been of interest to every top media source in the world. His Twitter following exceeds 8.66 lakh people (@TataSons, the twitter handle of the group languishes at 22,600!).

For context, the prime minister’s office handle (@pmoindia) trails at 7.7 lakh.

Even Mr Tata trails behind a rather unlikely suspect! Vijay Mallya (Twitter: @theVijayMallya) has an astounding 2.1 million follows!

So, that’s the kind of traction that Mr Mallya’s recent tweet berating policy paralysis in India must have generated. To counter that, the government’s official handle (@pib_india) has a modest 77,000 follows.

The burden of my song is that in 22 years since the days of the days of “commerce desk” in the TOI, millions of people in the digital world are now hooked to economic story tellers like Mr Tata and Mr Mallya.

Their collective reach, and that of Anand Mahindra (@anandmahindra with 8.9 lakh follows), is larger than the combined reach of India’s entire brood of specialised business publications. Not everyone following this Holy Trinity (combined following of 3.9 million) is impressed by celebrity quotient.

For that there’s Priyanka Chopra (Twitter: @priyankachopra. Followed by over 4.55 million)!

Is it important therefore that policy makers in North Block and other economic ministries devote greater attention to communicating the India Story with the digital world?

The green shoots are evident.

Information and broadcasting ministry has armed itself with Rs 26 crore in budget for new media outreach. Speaking to me, a principal interlocutor on the subject said it was heartening to see government guns moving away from treating social media as “Facebook that my children are on all the time!”

But changing a life-long habit of “staying safe on file” isn’t easy. For that there are young volunteers from Indian Institute of Mass Communication as well as Delhi College for Arts and Commerce, for example, can easily be spotted from All India Radio (twitter: @airnewsalerts) to Doordarshan (@DDNewsLive).

I met a particularly bright young social media volunteer for the government back after a great time at president PranabMukherji’s back office. Folks like him don’t just have passing interest in economic subjects. They, more than I did when I was 25 in 1992, buttonhole me for simple facts on why the rupee is sliding. Their attention span may be a lot less than we’d like, but an attractive collage on why the Syrian crisis bloats our oil bill, how that hits our deficits, and how this negates what the finance minister may be trying to do via curbing gold imports isn’t an economic story for this generation anymore.

Similarly, new Reserve Bank of India governor Raghuram Rajan’s first speech since ascending office that by November household savers can have a bond that will yield them interest around the Consumer Price Index (a measure which reflects actual state of prices on the ground) than Wholesale Price Index, which is scandalously understated.

What the mainstream media isn’t, those in the new-media cell of government need to learn from how the captains of industry I mentioned, and some new-age politicos like Manish Tewari (@manishtewari), Shashi Tharoor (@shashitharoor), Anurag Thakur (@ianuragthakur) and Jay Panda (@panda_jay) are creating a clean communication paradigm on the India Story. So are relatively less-known ones like Nikhil Narayanan (@nikhilnarayan) and Rajeev Mantri (@RMantri). Both have a different day job, but their followership exceeds professional business writers.

So, the India Story isn’t economics any more. It isn’t even cynicism and berating each other leveraging the anger among our youth using hashtags like #Pappu and #Feku.

It’s about connecting as a great nation!