Discussions on the draft political-organisational report presented by Polit Bureau member Prakash Karat at the 23 rd Party Congress of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] hovered around plugging the weaknesses in the party organisation especially at the top level.
As reported by The Hindu earlier, the draft report makes sharply critical observations about the inability of the Polit Bureau and the Party Centre to effectively translate local struggles into mass movements and formulate potent campaigns to counter the onslaught of the Sangh Parivar ideology.
Starting from K.N. Balagopal from Kerala who opened the discussion on the draft report, most discussants, it was reliably learnt, wanted the central leadership to demonstrate better cohesion and have more striking power.
Mr. Karat told the media on Saturday that the report was a self-critical review of the functioning of the party top brass since the last Party Congress four years ago. The COVID-19 prevented the party from fulfilling many tasks undertaken thereafter. However, effective intervention could be done during the anti-CAA struggle and the farmers’ agitation.
“The anti-CAA strife had turned into a secularising movement and the Left would have gained [electorally] if it had continued,” he said. “The farmers’ protest, on the other hand, was centred in a few States where the BJP was already deeply entrenched… which shows that the fight against the BJP is a protracted one,” he said.
The party membership plummeted during the period between 2018 and 2021 from 10,07,903 members to 9,85,757 members, with Tripura and West Bengal witnessing a dropping out of 23,000 members and over 31,000 members respectively. While Mr. Karat ascribed it to the scourge of the pandemic in the months of membership renewal, party membership grew in this period in Kerala from 4,89,086 to 5,27,174 and in Tamil Nadu from 90,474 to 93,982.
On the election front, the severe setbacks in West Bengal and Tripura, primarily due to repression and rigging by disallowing filing of nomination and other malpractices, caused a setback to the party strength and organisational abilities in these two States, Mr. Karat said.
In order to recoup and strengthen the party, more emphasis would be placed on the quality of membership by equipping them to combat the Hindutva ideology and also by changing the composition of the party with more informed youth and women.
Mr. Karat said that in States without a history of BJP governance—Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Odisha for instance—many failed to see the impending danger and that was why they should be sensitised politically. On the electoral debacles, he said the party was not working to just win elections.
“However, mass struggles alone do not help the party grow, as the people in these struggles should be politically educated and sensitised,” said a senior leader. The party would firm up innovate programmes to attract the new generation, he added.
Among the criticisms raised against the leadership was its perceived inability to review implementation of the decisions taken by it and the performances of the top brass. Mr. Karat will respond to the queries on Sunday morning before the report is adopted. By noon, a new Polit Bureau and Central Committee will be elected.
