LS poll debacle: CPI(M) to hold zonal meetings from July in a bid to regain lost ground in Kerala

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] will initiate zonal meetings from July 2 to strengthen the party and help it regain the ground it lost in the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections. 

The United Democratic Front’s (UDF) dominance in 111 Assembly segments in Kerala and the BJP’s lead in 11 are significant factors shaping the central political reality of the CPI(M)‘s “harshly critical” self-analysis and soul-searching. The meetings will conclude in August.

The CPI(M) also viewed the “game-changing” ballot for the BJP as a “troubling landmark” in the history of the State’s largely secular politics. The CPI(M) has reportedly scrambled to calibrate strategies to counter the BJP’s bid to foster identity politics among Hindu caste groups and subsequently strike a transactional alliance with their respective leaderships to push large sections of society from traditional broad-based party politics to far-right and revanchist positions.

An arguably epochal shift in its backward-class Ezhava support base, a crucial electoral bloc in the State, to the BJP had reportedly reverberated through the CPI(M) ‘s State and Central secretariat meetings that concluded last week. For one, the CPI(M) has encouraged progressives and secularists in the Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana (SNDP) Yogam to challenge the current leadership’s “revanchist turn.” 

IUML’s stance

The CPI(M) also feared that an “Islamist drift” in the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) and its eagerness to “align with fundamentalist forces” would stoke Hindu majoritarian nationalism, which could arguably prove advantageous to the BJP. 

The CPI(M)‘s State committee also felt that a section of the Church leadership had fallen prey to Sangh Parivar’s brand of Islamophobia, forgotten the trespasses on Christians in Manipur and aligned with the BJP, chiefly in Thrissur, for alleged self-interests.

The CPI(M)‘s bleak reading of the LS polls’ runes has compelled the party to examine the “shortcomings” of those at the LDF government’s helm. If the signals emanating from the CPI(M) leadership were anything to go by, the party’s reversal of fortunes in the LS polls was unlikely to cause any high-profile casualties in the LDF government. However, the CPI(M) has pointedly blamed the government, “hamstrung by the Centre’s financial embargo”, for its misplaced spending priorities, including non-payment of social welfare pensions and State employee benefits.

The CPI(M) leadership might have to sit through strident criticism as it reports the party’s post-poll analysis to lower committees. Criticism of the government and its figureheads is reportedly regarded as fair game in closed-door party committee meetings governed by almost cult-like secrecy.