Averting a rare contest for leadership after a night of long knives over this weekend, the CPM, the largest surviving Left party in India, underwent a leadership change. After the announcement, the new party general secretary, Sitaram Yechury, who replaced Prakash Karat after an interregnum of three years, admitted that the party faced one of the biggest challenges in its long and tortuous history. “The challenge is to arrest the decline we have seen in the past and regain, to begin with, and then expand our presence both in the parliamentary and extra parliamentary arenas.”
A cursory look at the party’s history over the last two decades gives an idea of its present predicament. In 1991, it had representatives in the Lok Sabha from nine states, and now it is restricted to West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura. Worse, its vote share in West Bengal—where it has the best record ever having ruled the state for 34 years on a trot—has shrunk from a little over 50 per cent in 2006 to below 30 per cent in the 16th general election; worse, it contested 93 seats nationally and managed only a 3.2 per cent vote share, the lowest ever.
The numbers may not be the right metric to measure the role the CPM has played in national politics. Ever since the end of the one-party dominance in Indian politics, it has been an influential voice in determining the national agenda. What it lacked in numbers it made up with its perceived intellectual heft. That the then chief minister of West Bengal and CPM veteran Jyoti Basu was the near universal choice of all parties forming the non-BJP, non-Congress United Front for prime minister after the 1996 elections testified its political clout. The rub is that Basu was prevented from accepting the post by the CPM hardliners themselves, a decision the party’s 21st congress was forced to admit 20 years later as “a historic blunder”.
Can Yechury fulfil his promise of arresting the party’s decline and expand its space? He takes charge at a difficult time. The CPM has lost a great deal of its electoral vitality. It remains in power only in Tripura. Moreover, it seems to be losing its appeal among the youth and the intellectual class over the years.
The hard reality is that although the CPM leaders never came to terms with their historic stagnation in India politics, its troubles have not emerged overnight. Communist parties all over the world had to go through a reality check following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. While their comrades in Europe understood the changed circumstances and transformed their outfits into social democratic parties, the realisation never dawned on the Indian Left, especially the CPM.
The tone and tenor of the debate during the CPM’s 21st congress shows the Indian Marxists haven’t got the message even now. Delegate after delegate chose to blame India’s ills on a combination of neoliberal economic policies, imperialism and communalism. Their preoccupation with the outdated Marxist dogma results in CPM’s lack of traction with a huge section of India’s voters: the youth. Most of these voters were born after 1991 and have no memory of Communist struggles or even ideology.
Against this backdrop, Yechury is perhaps the best choice to lead the party’s revival. Unlike his dogmatic predecessor, he is pragmatic and can carry people of various ideological persuasions with him. However, converting a Marxist party into the mould of a social democratic party is not going to be easy.
Yechury has to change the rhetoric of the party from its 19th century “anti-capital, pro-revolution” mode to recognise that capitalism and social welfare can coexist. Any effort towards bringing about this transformation will be stoutly resisted by the Stalinist dinosaurs entrenched in the party apparatus.
At a time when the traditional politics of vote banks based on caste and religion is changing into one of performance and social and economic inclusion, a progressive Left, with a positive agenda, can be a stabilising force.
upendrasarojsharma@yahoo.com