HomePoliticsNo big take-away from CPI (M) national meet, party stands where it...

No big take-away from CPI (M) national meet, party stands where it stood

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Thiruvananthapuram: ‘Historic’ is the most overused expression by the CPI (M) bigwigs during the party’s just concluded 23rd Congress in Kannur in Kerala. But for the self-deluding repetition of this cliché, the party stands where it stood before its five-day all-India meet opened on April 6.

‘Historic’ means a moment that creates history. It portends a decisive step forward, breaking out of the long-held ideas and practices. The take-away from the Kannur meet, however, hardly offers any reason to believe that CPI(M) has made a paradigm shift in its political, strategic and tactical lines it has been pursuing for the last few decades. 

The clarion call from the red-splashed podium was to ‘isolate and defeat’ the – ‘communal-divisive’ BJP.  There is nothing new about the CPI(M), or for that matter the other mainstream Left outfits, making this exhortation. The key question is whether the party, whose support-base is essentially confined to Kerala, got any lead to role play in achieving this national goal.  The party congress drew to a close without giving any definitive clue to this central issue.

The party has once again made it clear that it is not going to take the initiative, or a critical role, in forging a pre-election alliance for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. On the other hand, it sees a possibility of a post-poll coalition of the non-BJP parties, especially the regional outfits, emerging with required numbers after the polls. The party will take an important role in that situation to see that the BJP does not get a third consecutive term.

 One is at a loss to know what is ‘historic’ about this stand. This has been the position followed by the party over the last three decades.

It is obvious that the CPI(M) leaders do not want to decide which party is capable of leading a possible post-poll anti-BJP front. In common perception, the Congress is the only party, apart from the BJP, which has a national presence. But openly acknowledging this is a bit inconvenient for the CPI(M) leaders in Kerala. The party’s Kerala leadership, both the lead comrades and the carders down the line, cannot just think of any open truck with the Congress, even outside the home state.

All the same, what will be the party’s electoral choice in most Hindi heartland states where the Congress and the BJP fight it out between them?  Though CPI(M)’s cadres and supporters are far and few between in these states, their sole option is to vote for the Congress candidates to see that the BJP is contained. This plain truth, however, has been quietly kept out of debate in the party congress.

Then, the party’s line towards other major regional outfits like AAP, TMC, TRS, YSRCP and BJD is also ambiguous. It will be a self-defeating game for the CPI(M) in West Bengal to admit the critical role of TMC in the post-poll scenario. A section of the party leadership has strong reservations about AAP, which is increasingly positioning itself as a credible national alternative to the BJP after its emphatic victory in Punjab.

Significantly, M K Stalin of Tamil Nadu was the only chief minister of a non-BJP party to attend the meet by participating in a seminar on ‘federalism’ held on the side-lines of the side-lines of the party congress.

The organisational resolution adopted by the meet has its emphasis on strengthening the party and its feeder outfits. This involves regaining the lost ground in states like West Bengal and Tripura and expanding the footprint across the country by organizing mass struggles based on serious issues that concern life and livelihood of the people.  This, however, is a hard task to achieve considering the precarious position of the party and its trade union, youth and women fronts in the country. Kerala accounts for nearly half of the party’s membership base. After losing power a decade back, the party could not even win a single seat in last year’s assembly polls in West Bengal.

A striking feature of the party congress was that it had been largely Kerala-centric. The pomp and fanfare of the party’s clout in the state had been on full display right from day one. The state unit was also able to make the central leadership fall in line on the Pinarayi Vijayan government’s big-ticket semi—high speed rail corridor project Silver Line.

The first day of the party congress saw general secretary Sitaram Yechury expressing some misgivings about the project that will displace hundreds of people. But by the final day, which saw Yechury being unanimously elected to the top party post for a third straight term, the entire leadership turned positive towards SilverLine. In this turnaround, the party was largely silent on the agitation it still leads in Palghar in Maharashtra against the Ahmedabad-Mumbai bullet train project. The smug explanation is that in Kerala the government has offered a highly attractive compensation to land losers but no such assurance has been made in the case of Ahmedabad-Mumbai project.

Perhaps, the only radical outcome of the party congress is the inclusion of a Dalit face in its Politburo.  Ramchandra Dom from West Bengal became the first PB member from a subaltern background to get a berth in the topmost tier of the party in its several decades of history.

Despite the elf- indulgence, it goes to the credit of the CPI(M) it is one of the few communist parties in today’s world where the entire members down to the grass roots get a direct or indirect opportunity to join the process of discussing the political, strategies and tactics to be followed by the party.  This exercise, called ‘democratic centralism’ by the Leninist rule book, starts from the local committee level and culminates in the party congress, an assembly of delegates from all organisational tiers.

N Muraleedharan
N Muraleedharan
Senior Journalist from Kerala. Worked with leading news agency Press Trust of India. He is regular columnist and writes on politics of Kerala and National Politics.

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