The Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M)) in Kerala is in the throes of a churn after its spectacular loss in the parliamentary elections last month with rumblings in the party about the high-handedness and disconnect of party leaders both at the top and bottom with its supporters.
The media has in the last few weeks been agog with unnamed party sources airing their grievances. Former Kerala finance minister and senior CPI(M) leader T.M. Thomas Isaac spoke to The Wire about what ails the party and what needs to be done to rectify the situation.
Isaac has been in the news for rallying Opposition parties in the country to demand central funds owed to the states which was denied by the Modi government, and it is with same sense of righteousness that Isaac talks about his party in its last bastion in Kerala, in the coastal town of Bekal, in Kasargod.
Excerpts from the interview:
There’s been a lot of introspection within the CPI(M) in the last couple of weeks ever since the election results which saw the party plummet to the bottom in Kerala? What in your estimation is the reason for this dismal performance?
The results went completely against our expectations. Of course, we weren’t expecting a sweep but we believed the LDF (Left Democratic Front) would get at least half the seats; a victory was crucial to have a national presence with a significant number in parliament but that was not to be. It only shows that we have not been able to break the jinx that has been hovering over Kerala’s electoral scene from say 2009, for you would find a very clear demarcation between the voting pattern in the assembly elections and in parliament.
Look at the figures, in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, the LDF had 42%, in 2014 it came down to 40% and in 2019, it was 35% and now it’s 33%.
This is certainly alarming, but if you look at the vote share of the LDF in the state elections during the same period, you get a very different picture — in 2000 state election, LDF got 45%, in 2016, we got 43%, in 2021, it was 45% again — so, it’s the opposite trend in the assembly and also the local government elections, in fact, in the local government elections we get an even better vote percentage.
The Left had more than 60 seats in parliament in 2004, but it has been in a free fall from 2009, could the Left’s pulling out support to the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) in 2009 on the Indo-US nuclear deal be a reason for its diminishing role in national politics? What are the other reasons for the Left losing in Kerala today?
Yes, 2004 was a great performance by the Left in national politics but I don’t believe the Left pulling out support to the Manmohan Singh government in 2009 brought its downfall; it was the serious electoral setbacks in Bengal and Tripura in 2009 that the Left’s strength began diminishing in national politics. In Tripura, I believe, it was overconfidence as they underestimated what the BJP could do; in Bengal, there was serious anti-incumbency after 34 years of unstinted rule, also compounded by a certain degeneration in the party organisation. So a section of the voters in Kerala felt the role the Left can play at the national level is very limited.
Also, by 2019, minority communities in Kerala believed it was the Congress that was a national secular alternative in Delhi and backed the Congress hoping it would challenge the BJP, but the Congress fared badly in the election.
So, are you saying the Left will do well in the coming local government elections and later in the assembly elections?
No, this does not mean that in the coming local government election next year, and thereafter in the assembly elections in 2026, the Left’s vote share will automatically rise and we will win Kerala again. That’s not the argument at all. The decline in the vote share this time is the lowest in its history which means a section of the core vote of the Left has shifted and that’s dangerous for the LDF.
Let’s see where it’s going downward.
The base of the Left in Kerala is the rural proletariat — agriculture, workers in traditional industries, the construction sector, labourers, and poor people. At the other end is the organised working class where the Left is an important presence but in terms of numbers, it is the rural poor which is the base of the Left.
In this election, a section of the poor was obviously disenchanted with the Left’s performance and voted against it. In Kerala, the Left faces a daunting challenge — while the traditional base is this rural poor, but over time, structural changes have been taking place in the economy and their numbers are diminishing. As the last three census show, the number of agriculture workers have declined, traditional industries are in serious decline, etc; and on the other hand, a new middle class has emerged, around 30% of the population which is big, who have benefited from migration, upward social mobility, better education and high commercial crop prices. This was true till around the 1999-2000, when it all collapsed.
The challenge before the Left was not only to protect its base but also win a section of the middle class whose expectations are very different.
Did the Left fall between the rural poor and the new middle class?
No, in fact we evolved a strategy and also implemented it, and this was seen as a great success of the last LDF government, from 2016 to 2021, which brought a kind of historic alliance between the poor and sections of the middle class. This strategy for the vision of a new Kerala stood on two legs — one, give total social security to the poor where social welfare pensions were to be raised from Rs 500 to Rs 1600, and consequently eligibility went from 32 lakh beneficiaries to 62 lakhs in five years, which is about 50 lakh households, or almost half the population. Apart from other social welfare benefits like education, health etc.
The second leg looked at the middle class and their aspirations — they want quality education for their children, better healthcare system than was being provided but more importantly, they want quality jobs. We had good primary education but no good skill and technical higher education institutes. We also had to create an environment for ease of business to attract capital for investment in industry for growth and better paying jobs.
The right wing and liberal narrative has always been that the Left was only good at redistribution of resources but not for creating wealth.
We decided to change this perception and came up with a Left strategy which said one, the economy’s productivity must increase where we employ modern advanced technology to concentrate upon sectors which are knowledge intensive, skill intensive and so on, which can afford to pay higher wages. Two, overhaul your higher education institutes; three, improve infrastructure which was so bad, from roads to industrial parks to knowledge cities.
We set up the Kerala Infrastructure Investment Fund Board (KIIFB) in 1999, an elegant, open model assured by law and government guarantee, for big infra projects from digitisation of education, building schools, hospitals, roads, bridges, power projects etc. So far Rs 80,000 crores of projects have been tendered in the state.
This mega and unprecedented infra development was the mandate of the last LDF government 2016-2021, and we managed both social welfare and economic productivity which is what brought us back again in 2021 by both the poor and middle class.
Why were the new middle class disillusioned then?
The knowledge economy is the mandate of the present government and we are getting there, but it takes time and it is in this transition period that there is a lot of disaffection, people don’t understand. Also, the central government squeezed funds owed to the state in the most sinister way, our government even protested in Delhi but it was not effective here — the reason being, and now I see a scheme in this, a campaign was unleashed two years ago against the CPI(M) by big media supported by the Opposition and some academics who are friends so i won’t name them, that Kerala was going the Sri Lanka way — fiscal mismanagement and that borrowing heavily has landed us in a debt trap.
Nothing could be further from the truth — Kerala is one of the fastest growing economies today, your debt increase is a sign of the robustness of your economy because it’s only a matter of time you will grow out of your debt.
However, we lost the perception battle ideologically, we lost the narrative, it was our failure.
But not only has the Left vote share dropped to 33%, the lowest in its history, it has gone to the BJP?
Yes, I agree that the numerous welfare schemes for the poor that were promised and initiated by our last government had to be delivered, it’s sacrosanct, but they were not fulfilled which is why the voter was angry in 2024. However, the Left’s vote shift to the BJP is serious for the BJP is a different animal.
Let’s look at the reasons: First, the BJP has over the last few decades steadily taken over temple committees after the Left took a decision about 15 years back that no party member will be part of temple boards. The BJP swiftly moved in to fill this void and has systematically been using temples to propagate Hindutva by launching bhakti movements, and because it is religious, you cannot oppose it. The RSS-BJP slips in anti-Muslim rhetoric particularly through WhatsApp groups, bhajana sangams etc connected to these temples. Second, though the Hindu community did not buy into Hindutva despite RSS having the largest network of shakhas in the state, because of the Kerala Hindu ethos; today with the BJP at the Centre espousing it for over 10 years and more, and supporting every effort in the state, this new ethos is seeping into the culture drip by drip.
I admit the Left missed or ignored this systematic takeover, but while we still disallow temple board membership, we support every secular candidate.
Has the Left’s caste base shifted too?
Earlier, caste organisations had very little direct role in Kerala politics, they did try to float political organisations in the 70s and early 80s but it didn’t succeed; even the CPI(M) had said caste organisations should not enter politics, nor were we interested in capturing them. As the CSDS survey has calculated, 63% of Dalits in Kerala vote for theLeft, 53% OBCs, less than 40% of upper castes, and only 30% of minorities vote for the Left. This is the caste breakup.
However, 10 years back, the Ezhavas, a dominant OBC caste and a big supporter of the Left floated a political party, the BDJS (Bharath Dharma Jana Sena), and its caste organisation, SNDP (Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam), was soon co-opted because the latter’s general-secretary’s son was head of the BDJS. While the BDJS has barely made any headway politically, it has been systematically capturing local bodies of the SNDP over time. In fact, in this election local units of SNDP were openly campaigning for the BDJS and yes, it had an impact in some constituencies like in Alleppy, Kottayam, where BDJS was able to build a bridge with SNDP. Also, the BJP has been surreptitiously appointing its people in these political caste organisations, which we will resist — this is a new situation and the Left was slack yet again and not alert to this new development. We have to work out a plan to face this challenge.
Also read: Kerala: CPI (M) Takes Stock of Shift in Political Dynamics, Analyses Reasons for LDF’s Rout
The minorities like the Christians are being actively wooed by the BJP, on the other hand, Muslims didn’t bite your anti-CAA stand?
Even as the council of Bishops and the bishops of Kerala have been making strong statements on Manipur, the BJP has been putting pressure on the FCRA clearances. I don’t think the church misuses money, the Church spends money on educational institutions and so on but if somebody wants to catch you they can because over time you take for granted certain procedures which can be tripped. So the Church has been under tremendous pressure here.
The Left has always sided with Muslims in every imperialist aggression, from the Khilafat movement in 1921, in Kerala, where we supported the uprising, we removed many of the restrictions that were imposed by the British on mosque construction and so on. The Left has always taken a principled stand of minority rights, from the Iraq war to Palestine to CAA. But today the BJP says Muslim appeasement the moment you take a stand in favour of Muslims and it gets a sympathetic ear from certain sections of the Christians. Yet, the BJP gets barely five per cent of the Christian vote but it is concentrated in places like Trichur (where the BJP got its first parliamentary seat in Kerala) and certain parts of central Travancore. Yes, a kind of shift has taken place in the community.
More crucially, the Left today has been beset by allegations of corruption, arrogance, and the leadership being completely out of touch with people?
I accept there has been an erosion of connection between party and people, or we could not have missed the dissatisfaction and disaffection of our supporters this election. The party central committee too has said the living connection with the people has been eroded. Before the poll, our party assessment gave us 12 seats, then the drop in voter turnout during polling was dismissed as a drop in Opposition Congress-BJP vote, but post-poll it was revealed that not only did angry Left workers and supporters not come out to vote as was seen in traditional CPI(M) bastions, many Left voters voted the BJP and Congress. It was a complete disconnect between the party and people.
It’s obvious today — the people have not changed, the party has changed.
A degeneration has taken place and we have to self-critically make an assessment on the extent of petty corruption that is seeping into the party. Remember, the Left in Kerala is not just the state government, you have cooperatives, women self-help groups, panchayats and so on. Problems have emerged that people are mishandling money, let’s admit corruption exists and people don’t like it.
The media has been agog with stories of corruption, recently a district CPI (M) member was accused of accepting bribes for posts in the Kerala Public Service Commission, then a senior leader’s son was accused of gold smuggling. Hasn’t the CPI (M) taken cognisance of this ‘degeneration’ within the organisation?
No, not enough. I don’t want to go into individual cases and there are many similar cases, all this has been discussed at party conferences in the last few years but rectification has not been enough, it has only slipped further.
The party has taken cognisance of it but taking cognisance and acting on it are not the same, and we have not succeeded in taking action yet. The central committee has also identified the demeanour and arrogance of party workers from top to bottom as another reason for the disconnect between party and the people. There will be no leniency in tackling corruption.
However, I would add that it’s not a complete collapse but it has certainly gone beyond the normal. The difference in the voting pattern in parliamentary and assembly elections is not to be dismissed, we have to do course correction, beginning with critically examining government functioning and re-prioritising government programs.
The Pinarayi Vijayan government has been accused of arrogance and high-handedness.
I don’t want to comment on Pinarayi Vijayan, or any individual because the media is trying to create an image of the party leadership, but everyone has their own style of functioning which is natural — but in these present times unless you are careful it can create an image which gets stuck. Yes, the central committee at its meeting has said arrogance is present at every level, but it’s also democratic that every party member is free to air their criticisms and the party must patiently hear grievances.
Is it being done? It’s not happening sufficiently and must therefore be rectified.
How are you going to stem the slide for the coming local bodies and assembly elections beginning next year?
We have a big political and ideological fight with the BJP and Hindutva; we have to match the BJP’s money power with their central schemes and counter it by rolling out our welfare schemes; the challenge before the Left in Kerala is can you take forward the democratic project which we established in the state? We have given good education, healthcare and better life and human dignity for so many generations of Malayalis. Now times have changed. People also change. Their demands change. How do you take it forward? We are meeting at the end of the month after having heard party workers at the district level, we will discuss and decide a program of future action. We have to reimagine the idea of a new Kerala, an even more democratic and progressive society.
