#dnaEdit: Transform or perish

On the eve on the CPI-M’s 21st congress later this month, its thrice-elected general secretary Prakash Karat’s interview to the Indian Express, is indeed disappointing. This is Karat’s last-term in office. And his admirers and detractors alike are unlikely to rue the CPI-M veteran’s exit from the top party post.  They might even heave a sigh of relief. It can be argued that the party’s general secretary — during his long tenure in office — did little other than passively watch his party slide into irrelevance. Regrettably, even at this hour of party crisis, the general secretary has no insights — significant or insignificant — to offer for the CPI-M’s decline into irrelevance.

One seriously wonders — why did the CPI-M leadership, supposedly, more erudite than the rest of the political class — allow the party to drift so dangerously, and for so long? It is ironic that despite being a party of radical opposition — to begin with — the CPI-M appears to have lost its political nerve after losing state power in West Bengal. Too many years and decades in Writers’ Buildings and a high-powered role in the making and unmaking of governments at the Centre, appear to have sapped the CPI-M of its energy. Even as the Aam Aadmi Party came into being and spread its wings, the CPI-M could only watch from the sidelines.

From a point of high national visibility and 34-years of uninterrupted hegemony over West Bengal, the CPI-M today teeters on the outer peripheries of politics at the Centre and in the state once considered the bastion of Communists. In such a context, it could only be reasonable to expect the party’s general secretary to shed some light on the CPI-M’s decline; it’s ideological as well as organisational attrition; its inability to imagine a different kind of politics in contemporary India. One could have hoped that the general secretary — for once — would jettison the trite and conventional arguments usually trotted out by the party’s top brass. 

But Karat — sadly — has chosen to stick to the conventional speak. His argument that his party — stagnating for decades — has not been able to reach out to new sections of people, decidedly lacks any kind of novelty. For instance, responding to the party’s plight in West Bengal, Karat intones the familiar response: the responsibility of the failure lies with the central leadership, and as the general secretary, he is “also part of this.”

Karat, however, does make an interesting admission in this context. He argues for the CPI-M to adopt innovative organisational methods. “Traditional ways of organising are not sufficient. We see that in big cities; trade union work alone is not sufficient to organise the entire urban poor,” says Karat in the interview.

No doubt, breaking out of the formula — moving beyond the dogmatic party paradigm — is essential to reviving the CPI-M. For this, the party will have to re-invent itself. It would need to forge links with other social movements and popular fronts it used to keep at an arm’s length. In fact, it would be no exaggeration to say that it was precisely CPI-M’s narrow sectarianism which stymied its potential to expand beyond the three states of West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura. Karat’s concession that trade union work alone — is not sufficient in mobilising the urban poor — is a late but welcome realisation.

At the forthcoming party congress, the baton will pass from Karat to his successor. But mere change of guard at the helm is not going to transform the CPI-M into a relevant party in opposition. For that, the party will need to make a fundamental departure from its stated organisational tactics and strategies. More importantly, it will have to transform itself into a flexible rather than a rigid political entity.