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ShareNew Delhi: This has not been a good year for the communists in India what with electoral reverses in crucial states, loss of cadre to rival ideologies and worse, to violent clashes. Five years ago, the scenario was completely different. With 62 MPs, the Left dictated terms to the Central government and its importance was loud and clear -- from bastions West Bengal and Kerala all the way to Delhi.
The fall from grace has its roots not just in the events specific to West Bengal and Kerala, but in deeper ideological issues.
"The Left has always been identified with the struggle for the rights of the poor and the disenfranchised, but the CPM cadre, particularly in West Bengal, is also perceived as an instrument of state oppression," said a senior leader of the party. He said that "struggle" and ideological rigour needed to be re-enforced in the cadre.
The CPM's rectification document, which seeks to repair such anomalies, has a pre-ponderence of dos and donts on personal behaviour and wealth. "The rectification document was the idea of our Bengal unit in 1983," he said, adding it's difficult to sustain the pro-poor image of the party when it owns channels, amusement parks and holds priceless real estate in both the states.
CPM MP Sitaram Yechury puts down the recent electoral losses, including the loss in the 2009 general elections, to three underlying causes.
"The first is the non-Congress-non-BJP front that we tried to put together before the 2009 general elections. This third alternative was made up of parties which could not gain the trust of the people," he said. "Secondly, the index of opposition unity did us in. The percentage of votes we polled was the same as the previous years, but the combined vote of the Trinamool and the Congress, which used to be scattered earlier, made the critical difference," he said. The third crucial reason, Yechury said, is the 50 lakh new voters in West Bengal. "We have not been able to figure out whether it was these voters who consolidated the opposition vote or other social groups like the peasantry or minorities deserted us," he said.
The Left's decline in West Bengal and Kerala becomes significant not just because these states are Left bastions, but because the party has not been able to grow in other states. It had a huge presence in states like Punjab and Rajasthan; it's a non-player in both now. "We have found that people are with us when we organise big struggles on economic issues in various states, but when it comes to voting, this support is absent. The north and other states vote on the basis of caste, even though we find support in our trade movement initiatives," he said.
"There is a lack of confidence when it comes to the Left taking up social issues. Thus I always say that until you find a red flag at a village well where a Dalit has been prevented from drinking water, we will not be able to grow," he said.
But if the Left starts dabbling in identity politics will its character remain the same? Yechury feels it has to be relevant to people's struggles. Clearly, this is a time of great churning for the communists and a purging may follow. But the question really is, as a senior leader puts it, "Will the purging lead to suicide or rebirth (of the Left)."
