The CPI-M’s decision to fall back on Prakash Karat, general secretary from 2005 to 2015, to run the outfit until the party congress meets next April and elects a new general secretary in place of the recently deceased Sitaram Yechury, suggests a leadership crisis. It is unlikely that Karat, 76, now appointed interim coordinator, will continue to head the party after April. In 2022, the CPI-M decided to retire leaders from party positions once they turned 75. This condition, if
The CPI-M’s decision to fall back on Prakash Karat, general secretary from 2005 to 2015, to run the outfit until the party congress meets next April and elects a new general secretary in place of the recently deceased Sitaram Yechury, suggests a leadership crisis. It is unlikely that Karat, 76, now appointed interim coordinator, will continue to head the party after April. In 2022, the CPI-M decided to retire leaders from party positions once they turned 75. This condition, if enforced at the April Congress, rules out not just Karat but will also force the party to retire many of its senior leaders. It will need to build a new leadership with relatively younger people, but they are unlikely to command the authority of Yechury or the Karats.
This leadership crisis is a making of the party’s tactics, which privileged a bureaucratic approach to the political churn on the ground. Ideological puritanism caused the CPI-M to withdraw support to the United Progressive Alliance in 2008, which, in turn, cost the party influence at the Centre. With the BJP’s rise, the ideological climate turned against the Left. In 2011, the party was routed in West Bengal after 34 years in office, and in Tripura eight years later. In Kerala, where it holds office, the party has lost a lot of political ground.
Yechury recognised that the party’s electoral space was shrinking and focussed his energies on building the Opposition INDIA bloc. It helped the CPI-M to negotiate seat deals in states where it had become invisible — the alliance with the Congress helped the party win a Lok Sabha seat from Rajasthan and the party is contesting a seat in Haryana as a Congress ally. It needs to pursue this strategy of working as a part of the Opposition bloc and avoid ideological grandstanding if it wants to maintain some electoral presence. But that is likely to be a challenging proposition — especially in the absence of its most pragmatic leader.
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