A closer look at the successes and failures provides some clues as to why very few win big. In an interview with The Federal magazine, S. Gurumurthy, political strategist and editor of Tuglak, warned that successes like MGR’s cannot be replicated by Vijay. He said that even before splitting the DMK to form his own party, AIADMK, in the early 1970s, MGR was already a party within the party. His successor, J. Jayalalithaa, an astute, strong-willed and suave politician, had cut her teeth in the AIADMK, first serving as the party’s propaganda secretary and later as general secretary, after MGR’s demise in 1987. She was elected to the Rajya Sabha in 1984 before becoming the first woman chief minister of Tamil Nadu in 1991.
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