#dnaEdit: Himalayan odds

The newly elected CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury has an unenviable task at hand. His promise to revive his party, which has now touched the nadir in parliamentary and organisational strength, appears to be a daunting proposition. For decades now, the obsession with wedding Marxist ideology to Leninist organisational principles, which has been at the centre of the CPI(M)’s political strategy, has yielded only diminishing political returns. Even as the communists deliberated over party discipline and ideological positions, votaries of caste, regions, religious and cultural-nationalist politics were reaching out to the poor and marginalised communities. From leading India’s modest opposition in Parliament during the 1950s and 60s, the CPI(M) now finds itself on the verge of irrelevance, even among those sections which could have benefited, had the party worked among them on a sustained basis.

The Left Front is now in a dominant position only in Kerala and Tripura while in West Bengal it has increasingly ceded the opposition space to the BJP after losing power to the Trinamool Congress in 2011. The party has retained a semblance of organisational presence in small pockets across the country but nothing that can count as independent electoral heft. The strategy of forging electoral alliances with parties like the DMK, AIADMK, or YSR Congress has only lowered the standing of the CPI(M) even further among Left-leaning sections. In this context, the CPI(M)’s support for the Aam Aadmi Party in the recent Delhi assembly elections is quite ironical. The AAP’s rise is proof that alternative politics based on participatory and welfarist approach, as well as a simultaneous commitment to clean politics, can indeed attract the youth to politics. Such discourse can empower the poor and the lower middle classes who otherwise feel alienated from the politics pursued by mainstream parties. The challenge before Yechury then is to review the party’s strategy — politically as well as organisationally. As of now the party’s central leadership’s diktats are meant to be diligently followed by all party units, down to the local level, even at the cost of ignoring dissenting views. Such centralisation of politics must give way to great democratic functioning.

Yechury must revive the party in West Bengal and honestly confront the reality of 34 years of uninterrupted Left Front rule before he can even conceive a foray into the Hindi heartland. For decades, a loyal base comprising peasants, Muslims and Adivasis reposed unflinching trust in the CPI(M)-led Left Front which, however, failed to provide them with access to basic entitlements like education and health, let alone jobs and economic security. But the Nandigram and Singur land acquisition struggles, the Lalgarh uprising, and the controversial death of Rizwanur Rahman, disrupted this traditional support base. Now the party faces the onerous burden of distancing itself from that grim legacy and of proving its imagination in providing new ideas of governance. The party needs to go beyond its ideological grid if it wants to connect with the people — be it in the Hindi heartland or elsewhere. Yechury’s affable nature and his moderate image, in contrast to Karat’s hardline stances, have raised hopes that the CPI(M) may now walk a more flexible path. From 60 Lok Sabha seats when Karat took charge in 2005 to 10 in 2015 when the baton passes to Yechury, the party’s decline has indeed been steep. Yechury’s biggest asset and experience — his ability to cobble parliamentary alliances — matters little in the hard work of organisation building. With all parties leaving no stone unturned in wooing the youth, women, poor and Dalits, it is already a crowded field. The crisis facing international capitalism that the CPI(M) never stops evoking has not translated into a positive sentiment for socialism. The CPI(M) has only itself to blame for that.