Waning electoral performance has diminished their leverage in most States

From a high of 2004, when the four Left parties together got 59 seats, they are now struggling to stitch alliances even when they are ready to contest in fewer number of seats.

The largest Left party, the CPI(M), was snubbed by the Congress in West Bengal. The “no-contest policy” proposed by CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury was rejected.

In Bihar, the Rashtriya Janata Dal(RJD) has not spared them a single seat citing their minimal presence in the State. In Maharashtra, where it led one of the biggest farmers agitations in the recent past, the long march to Mumbai, the Nationalist Congress Party did not accommodate it in the Dindori Lok Sabha constituency, forcing it to announce its own candidate, while keeping the communication lines open with the NCP.

In Kerala, opinion polls predict that the CPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front will be reduced to single digit.

The Communist Party of India is is not faring any better. In Bihar, it was hoping to get at least one seat in the Opposition alliance, led by the RJD, but was dropped at the last minute.

In Jharkhand despite the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha’s Hemant Soren lobbying on the Left’s behalf the Congress has refused to concede the lone seat of Hazaribagh. In U.P. too the Congress has shown no inclination to offer any seat.

Political activist Yogendra Yadav says that the surprising part is not the Left’s decline, but that it came 25 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the cradle of the Communist movement. This coupled with the ushering in of the market economy, the mandal and mandir movements should have brought on an early demise of the Left, but it didn’t. “We need a Left-like force in democracy. The Left as it stands today is unable to perform that role,” Mr. Yadav says.

Strategy change

The Left leaders themselves agree that there is a crying need to rework the entire strategy. “There is a gap between the political ideological influence of the Left and its electoral performance. Why does this gap happen, that is what the Left has to analyse and adopt a suitable strategy,” CPI leader D. Raja said.

Is the Left being punished? First for stopping Jyoti Basu from taking the Prime Minister’s post and later prematurely pulling out from the Congress-led UPA government. Not at all, says Mr. Yechury. He claims that both decisions were to uphold their responsibility towards the voter.

“We won the seats in Parliament on the basis of some promises we made. It would have been a bigger betrayal if Jyoti Basu under coalition compulsions had not been able to implement them,” says Mr. Yechury.

The withdrawal of support to the UPA was also not the Left’s call but was forced by the Congress, he says. He, himself, agrees that the decline of the Left was between 2004-2014, when from 59 they have been reduced to just 11 Lok Sabha seats.

“After we pulled out of the UPA-1 allowed the cementing of all the other forces in Bengal. From the naxalites, RSS, Congress and RSS worked against us. There had been weakness both political and governmental. By the time we noted these and set in corrective mechanisms, perhaps it was too late,” Mr Yechury added.

So close to the elections the Left parties do not have answers on how to arrest this decline. “The Left could have survived as an electoral force if it made smarter political choices. The challenge for Left was if they stayed true to Left ideology they had no future. If someone says they had a future the answer is yes but by not remaining Left,” Mr Yadav said.