AFP
Poll rout leaves India's communists a spent force
May 19, 2009
NEW DELHI (AFP) — India's elections have left the country's once-powerful communists staring into the political abyss after their worst showing in three decades.
The four communist parties that make up the Left Front were routed in their traditional bastions of West Bengal and Kerala, and senior heads are expected to roll as they try to come to terms with the humiliating result.
>From being the third largest group with 61 seats in the 543-seat
parliament in 2004, the Front's tally collapsed to 24 in this
election.
The coalition's leading member, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPI(M) saw its seat share plunge from 35 to just 15 in West Bengal where it was, until recently, considered an unassailable force.
Analysts partly attributed the Marxists' downfall to unpopular policies aimed at kickstarting growth at the regional level.
"Their over-enthusiasm for industrialisation led the Marxists to grab farmland and the party is now paying for its mistakes," said Sunita Roy, a political analyst.
Fourteen people died in police firing last year during protests by Bengal farmers who insisted the Marxists forcibly acquired their land to set up an assembly plant for the world's cheapest car by India's Tata group.
"Heads will roll after an autopsy of the mistakes is over," Roy said.
One of the prominent figures caught in the crosshairs is CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat.
"He should be out now," said parliamentary speaker Somnath Chatterjee, who was expelled from the party last year.
Chatterjee said the party's top cadres had become obsessed with their own importance and lost touch with their grassroots supporters.
"The party should seriously consider change in leadership as mere narcissistic leadership will not help," Chatterjee added.
The CPI(M) swept to power in West Bengal in 1977 and has governed the eastern state ever since, revelling in the title of the world's longest-serving elected Marxist regime.
Until last year, the communists had backed India's Congress-led coalition government but then withdrew their support to protest against a civilian nuclear deal with the United States.
They were also blamed for impeding Congress attempts to implement pro-market economic reforms.
"People are fed up with the party's anti-people stance," said senior CPI(M) leader and West Bengal sports minister, Shubash Chakraborty.
"These people formulate policies in air-conditioned rooms," Chakraborty said.
The Communist Party of India (CPI) was founded in the 1920s to create an alternative to the existing Congress anti-imperialist movement and made a common enemy of the home-owning classes, whether British or Indian.
The movement split in the 1960s, leading to the creation of two parties with one having allegiance to the then Soviet Union and the other to China.
In the modern era, communist support was seen as crucial to any coalition government but the election changed that, handing a clear mandate to the Congress alliance which has no need to tempt back its former partners.
"The writing on the wall for the Left is clear as its hidebound dogmas no longer excite the Indian voter," The Times of India said in an editorial after the poll result.
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