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Superstar Rajnikant will be waxed into imnlorality at Madame Tussaud’s Museum in London. Created by wax, sculptor Marie Tussaud, the museum exhibits replicas of the world’s well-known personalities. ac It houses Indian personalities like in Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, Amitabh Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai and Shah Rukh Khan. With a receding hairline, the 57-year-old Rajnikant is all set to join the galaxy of world personalities at Tussaud’s.

World famous for his stunts, Ranji’s dialogues have fans in Japan and China. Muthu, a film starring Rajni was the first Tamil film to be dubbed into Japanese as Muthu: The Dancing Maharaja. Most Chinese admire him for his action-packed sequences and rugged body language.

It is said if Raj Kapoor conquered the Russians and Amitabh the Lebanese, Rajni seems to have carved up a major chunk of the Eastem belt for himself. In China, the youth watch on DVD system, Rajni delivering punchy dialogues to villains and romancing his lady love in caste Chinese. In Malaysia, a large number of Malay-speaking Chinese and Japanese are Rajni fans. Having acted in as many as 173 movies, including Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Hindi and Bengali movies, Rajni became super-hero.

By December, the superstar will create history by becoming the first Indian hero to be featured in an animated film. The 3D animated Sultan - The Warrior will be an action-packed adventure movie, featuring Rajni as a mythological and 1arger-than-life hero. The 90minute film will be offered as a gift to the superstar on his birthday by his younger daughter Soundarya Rajnikant. Directed by her, big names like music director A.R. Rehman, lyricist Vairamuthu and art director Thotta Tharani, besides a Hollywood stunt master, have been associated with the movie.

Rajni himself will lend his voice to the animated version. Already in production, the movie may turn out to be India’s most expensive animated film. Those associated with its production say, it would be a treat to both children and adult alike, particularly to large Rajni fans. Now known to be the filmdom’s highest paid veteran, his last film Sivaji: The Boss grossed Rs 150 crore.

Rajnikant was born in a Maharashtrian family based in Karnataka. His real name was Shivajirao Gaekwad. Coming from an ordinary family, he had a difficult childhood. In his youth he eked out a living by doing all kinds of odd jobs in Bangalore. He once worked as a bus conductor. 1bis was, perhaps, the reason why he connects so well with the masses. Side by side with odd jobs, he attended a theatre for stage plays. It was during this time that he nurtured his  acting interests by performing in various stage plays.

Later, he went on to do a formal course in acting in Chennai.

After years of struggle came Katha Sangama, his Kannada debut film in 1975. Initially he had to do with mere supporting roles, mostly those of villains and after much initiation came the lead roles. The acceptance of Rajni sans his mannerism testified that a star was born. From then, there was no looking back for him. He rose from strength to strength. He made his entry into the mainstream Hindi cinema with Andha Kanoon.

Those who have worked with Rajni say that ego and starry airs are unknown to him. Even in breaks during shooting, he would hardly ever rush to air-conditioned make up rooms. Instead he would prefer to sleep on the sets, even without a pillow, merely covering his eyes with a wet cloth. In 1980s at a crucial phase of his career, Rajni abruptly chose to quit acting, but was persuaded to return.

With global crude oil prices hitting the psychological barrier of $100 a barrel, the government has begun a desperate exercise to bail out the bleeding oil marketing companies with a solution that is acceptable to its allies.

The government is exploring all options ranging from an excise duty cut to a marginal hike in the prices of petrol and diesel. The Indian crude basket touched $92.29 a barrel on Tuesday (the new year begining).

Petroleum Minister Murli Deora told newsmen that the group of ministers (GOM) would consider all options available on the issue by the end of the month. “Price hike is not the only solution. Others like an excise duty cut on auto fuel, as suggested by Left, are also being considered. My endeavour will be to get a decision this month,” he said.

The GoM, which is expected to meet next week, will make recommendations to the Cabinet that will take a final decision. The prices of petrol and diesel were last reduced by Rs 2 and Re 1 a litre in middle of February 2007, with the average price of crude around $55 a barrel.

As per the current estimates, petrol is being sold Rs 9 per litre below the international price parity, while diesel faces under recoveryof Rs 10.90 a litre. Liquefied petroleum gas is sold Rs 331 below per cylinder, while the under recovery in kerosene is Rs 19.89 a litre.

The under recoveries for the current financial year have now ballooned to Rs 75,000 crore at current prices. The government would compensate the oil marketing companies through oil bonds to the exs tent of 42.70 per cent of their under recoveries, while upstream companies would share one-third of the burden. Inspite of these measures, the revenue loss of the oil marketing companies would still be in the vicinity of Rs 18,000 crore.

An increase of Re 1 a litre in petrol price would cut under-recoveries by Rs 90 crore a litre and the same on diesel would slash the loss by Rs 360 crore a month. If the government increases kerosene price by the same amount, losses would come down by Rs 95 crore per month and if LPG prices were raised by Rs 10 a cylinder, they would come down by Rs 58 crore per month.  A reduction in excise duty by Re 1 per litre on petrol and diesel would reduce the under-recoveries of oil companies by Rs 1,380 crore and Rs 5,270 crore respectively.

The GoM, headed by external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee, includes Defence Minister A.K. Antony, Finance Minister P.Chidambaram, Railways Minister Lalu Prasad, Road Transport and Shipping Minister T.R. Baalu, Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar and Petroleum Minister Murli Deora.

After quick and summary reactions of political parties and analysts to the Gujarat assembly election, a deeper assessment of its long-term impact is due. The election was a one-man victory and the closest historic parallel that is being drawn is of Indira Gandhi who had swept the poll after her revolt against the old guard of the Congress, her revolutionary steps like bank nationalisation and termination of privy purses and liberation of Bangladesh when she was hailed as goddess Durga.

Modi is being projected as a model leader- decisive and determined as compared to the rest of the national leaders - and a future Prime Minister. Yes, he has rebuffed the opposition of all secular forces and media campaign and falsified all predictions of professional pollsters.

But is strong leadership always an asset for a democracy? Indira Gandhi, with all her qualities of a good leader, landed the country into emergency, the blackest spot on Indian democracy and on the glorious history of the Congress party. After all Hitler, too, came to power through popular vote.

The qualities for which Modi and his election, campaign are getting kudos are that he did not depend on the support of the Hindutva parivar like the RSS and the VHP and even the national leadership of his party did not matter much in his success.

But these facts imply a threat to both of them. There is some truth in the Prime Minister’s comment that the sudden decision of the BJP to declare L.K. Advani as its Prime Ministerial candidate was to stem the threat that Modi posed to the BJP leadership.

Apart from his personality and quality of leadership that he projected, Modi’s election campaign was based on Gujarati pride, development and good governance and at a later stage as a fighter against “Islamic terror” in a diluted form.

It would be useful to analyse the role of each factor in his victory. To start with, he considered ‘jeetega Gujarat” his winning slogan. He enlisted the support of very dynamic and prosperous Gujarati NRI community and of the industrialists of the state. The Congress could not present an alternative vision of glory of Gujarat. It could neither project any past icons of Gujarat-as its own nor any present leader even as a tame imitation of Modi. The statement of iron man of India, Sardar Patel condemning the RSS and Hindu communalism for the murder of Mahatma Gandhi and the statement of Godse accusing him of appeasement of Pakistan and Muslims were very relevant to Modi’s vision of Gujarat as a van-guard of defense against the evil design of “Mian Musharraf’ and “Muslim terrorist” Sohrabuddih. The Congress failed to enthuse and mobilise even the disgruntled Patel community against Modi.

In any case, ambition of the “hero” of Gujarati pride, who projected his state to be saviour of the nation, to be the future Prime Minister of India, would have as much chances of success as that of any regional leader like Karunanidhi. Regionalism is, of course, a much lesser evil than communalism but a combination of the two makes a leader less acceptable to a highly diverse country like India. Even it would be difficult for the BJP not to speak of its allies in the NDA to accommodate such a leader. For that matter the BJP, too, had to give up its core demands like building Ram Mandir at the site of Babri Masjid, abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution, governing Kashmir’s relation with the Union of India and Uniform Civil Code, to forge the alliance of the NDA and become eligible to be in the race for power at the Centre.

How far Modi succeeded in making Gujarat a laboratory of Hindutva? Ram Puniyani, a well intentioned secular writer, for instance,  observes that after every communal violence, the major player of the violence, in this case the RSS affiliate the BJP, becomes stronger and the BJP’s performance has been best where the carnage was maximum.

A better organisational effort by the Congress would have enabled it to get more votes than the BJP. Without minimizing the threat of communal forces, we should take an objective view of the extent of this threat, as witnessed in Gujarat and elsewhere. Firstly, the major gains of the Congress are from central Gujarat which was the main scene of Muslim mayhem. In Godhra proper, from where the anti-Muslim riots spread, Congress candidate won a handsome victory. The Congress suffered its major losses in constituencies where it adopted rebel BJP candidates who were far from committed to a secular ideology.’

Secondly, half the voters who polled were against the BJP. A better organisational effort by the Congress would have enabled it to get more votes than the BJP. For future strategy of secular forces, 50 per cent anti-Modi voters should not be written off or demoralised. After all they defied the mass hysteria that Modi had built and voted against him despite weak organisational support.

Thirdly, after every riot, the BJP suffered a loss. For instance, after Ayodhya outrage, the BJP has been losing and has become a marginal force in UP. Similarly, after Bhagal pur riot in Bihar the BJP has been on decline. It recovered after a fresh combination of castes as a junior partner in the Bihar government. The BJP success at the Centre was possible only after it made all sorts of alliances with secular and with regional interests, including with secessionist undertones, at least in the past, like the National Conference in Kashmir, the Akali Dal in Punjab, the ADMK in Tamil Nadu and Christian groups in Nagaland. Will the party be able to retain its present allies in the NDA if Modi develops ambitions for a national role?

Finally, all concerned have to learn appropriate lessons from the Gujarat outcome. The psephology and election experts of the media, for instance, should sharpen their tools. Our foremost pollster, has if admitted his mistake of ignoring the raw data collected from views of the people and modifying it with the “wisdom” of the experts. Common men (or women) sometimes are wiser about the ground realities than their “intelligent” interpreters.

 All in all, Modi’s victory is not an unmixed blessing for the BJP unless its opponents get demoralised. The election result of Gujarat does not warrant such a sweeping conclusion.