CITHARA PAUL By

NEW DELHI: The CPI (M) seems to be gasping for breath and struggling to remain relevant even as it “celebrates” its 50th year of existence. CPI (M) General Secretary Prakash Karat and the party’s wannabe general secretary Sitaram Yechury may be waging an ideologically-coloured personal battle over what is wrong with the party, but they need not look beyond the latest membership figures being prepared by the party central office to get their answer.

According to the membership list, barely 32 people have joined the party in Delhi in the last two years—2012 and 2013—at the party headquarters AKG Bhavan. It is here that top leaders of the party—the Politburo members—meet every day and discuss national and international issues. But it seems that their hair-splitting debates on party line and ideology have not impressed many, as the party turned 50 on Friday. “These figures are a shame. If the leaders can’t influence even a hundred people in the place they live and work, aren’t then all these heated discussions on the rights and wrongs of party line meaningless? Unless you are capable of winning the hearts of the common man, all debates are useless,” a party central committee member told The Sunday Standard. He was alluding to the just-concluded four-day-long Central Committee meeting which witnessed heated exchanges on the rights and wrongs in the party line. The meeting witnessed unprecedented developments with Yechury coming up with an alternative document—an usual practice in the Stalinist party—which blames the current leadership for the party’s recent failures rather than blaming the political line.

There are more membership woes. In the once-bastion West Bengal, the party lost 2,008 members in the last two years despite the consistent presence of Politburo leaders—especially Karat and Yechury—in state committee meetings in Kolkata to deliberate ways to win back lost ground. “Karat may be the prime culprit, but Yechury is no less responsible for the party’s plight there as Bengal is considered Yechury’s terrain. Same goes for Brinda Karat too,” said a leader from Bengal.

The fact that the party has lost as many as 189 cadre in Andhra Pradesh—the home state of Yechury and Sreeramulu who had tried to subvert Yechury in the Central Committee meeting with his own alternative proposal—says a lot about what is wrong with the party.

The party has lost members in many states like Assam (659), Jammu and Kashmir (113), Odisha (119), Punjab (210), Uttar Pradesh (119) and Bihar (59). The only saving grace for the party is Kerala where 12,265 new cadre have joined the party in the last two years. The other two states which have registered significant increase in the number of members are Tamil Nadu (8677), Tripura (2713) and Karnataka (413).

As per the list, a total of 22,764 new cadre have joined the party in the last two years. A Karat loyalist attributed this to the “ideologically driven leadership of the party”. But what he chose to ignore was the fact that out of this figure, 12,665 were from Kerala, a place where the Politburo leadership has no say.

“The leadership can excuse itself by saying that the responsibility of enrolling cadre into the party lies with the Delhi state unit. But the figures also tell us that the central leadership has failed to make an impression. No wonder state units like those in Kerala care a damn for those who sit here and try to boss over them,” said another leader.

According to him, the CPI (M) top brass should learn a few lessons from AAP leaders like Arvind Kejriwal on how to win hearts. “Our leadership is yet to understand how AAP emerged as a big player in politics. To understand the reason, they just need to go to the AAP headquarters. It is unlikely that they will find any senior AAP leader there as they will be amid the common man. While CPI (M) top leaders will always be inside the AC confines of party headquarters engaging in hair splitting debates on national and international issues,” said a Delhi-based youth leader.