The More Things Change...

Kerala being the only state where the CPI(M) retains any political weight, it was natural that a good deal of fanfare was witnessed as its 23rd party congress wound down in Kannur—the local bastion—on April 10. But red festoons aside, to say India’s largest Communist party is at a critical juncture would be an understatement. Even so, the response to it broadly stuck to formula. Change and continuity could be thought of in, well, dialectical terms, but there was more of the latter on view.

- Jeemon Jacob

For one, the party renewed its faith in Sitaram Yechury, 69, who gets a third term as general secretary. He had taken over from Prakash Karat in 2015—a time when India had moved decisively into the Modi era, not the most propitious for Left politics. Considered less of a puritan and more of a pragmatist, he was seen as one who could perchance rescue the party from its nadir by dialling down the strict anti-Congressism of the Karat years—those had ended with an abysmal tally of nine Lok Sabha seats in 2014. But a disastrous outing in alliance with the Congress in West Bengal in 2016 trimmed Yechury’s leverage substantially on that front.