FPJ Analysis: Rejig In CPM, Revival The Goal

Perhaps recognising the need for a generational shift, the CPM at its recent party congress in Madurai named senior Kerala leader M.A. Baby as its general secretary to succeed the late Sitaram Yechury and inducted eight new members into its Politburo, many of them in their fifties. An 84-member Central Committee was also named, inducting 30 new faces. Baby is only the second leader from Kerala after EMS Namboodiripad to head the party. In keeping with the 75 years age cap, veterans such as Prakash Karat, Brinda Karat, Manik Sarkar and Subhashini Ali were dropped from the Politburo. The only exceptions were Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and P.K. Sreemathy. Vijayan is tasked with leading the party in the Kerala Assembly elections next year and trying to secure an unprecedented third term in power. For Baby, the path ahead is onerous, as he has to revive the party in West Bengal and Tripura, as well as make inroads in other unexplored areas.

The end of the Left rule in West Bengal after a record-breaking 34 years of power at the hands of Trinamul Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee resulted in a complete reversal of fortunes. Most of the CPM cadres joined the Trinamul to leave the party apparatus bereft. Similar was the situation in Tripura, where the BJP made remarkable gains in a matter of a few years. The CPM, which won a whopping 44 seats in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections, has seen a sharp decline, and it has now been reduced to the status of a regional party, with representation only in Kerala and a few other areas. In 2024, it won two Lok Sabha seats in Tamil Nadu with the help of the DMK and one seat in Rajasthan, courtesy the Congress. The CPM needs to press the reset button and think of innovative ways to revive the party. Realising the need for change, the Madurai congress tackled the tricky subject of whether the CPM is an atheist party and suggested that the message should be forcefully conveyed that it is not against religious beliefs to counter Hindutva forces that have appropriated a chunk of the Marxist votes, especially in Kerala.

The overwhelming sway of the Kerala unit of the CPM on party affairs is another factor that has not gone down well with members from Bengal and Maharashtra. At least six members of the Politburo are learnt to have objected to Baby being named general secretary, as they wanted the All India Kisan Sabha president and Politburo member Ashok Dhawale to take over the leadership of the party. There was also some drama when, for the first time, CITU vice president DL Karad entered his name for the Central Committee election, forcing a rare secret ballot. Ultimately, he was defeated, but the move itself was evidence of winds of change blowing in Marxist echelons in India. The road to revival of the CPM is long and arduous, and it must begin at the grassroots level. The Kerala unit calling all the shots and paying short shrift to ideology for the sole purpose of staying in power in the state does not bode well for the party. A case in point is the political resolution of the CPM describing the Modi government as one with ‘neo-fascist tendencies’, stopping short of calling it a ‘fascist or neo-fascist government’, as was done in the past. That the Left in Kerala has come to a tacit understanding with the BJP to marginalise the Congress is an open secret and speaks poorly of the ideological moorings of Indian communists.