Sitaram Yechury’s passing a year ago has left a chasmic void in the national political discourse. On his first death anniversary, we remember the man who was more than a usual politician; a brilliant marxist theoretician, a versatile tactician and an unwavering champion of Leninist political-economic vision rooted in equity and justice. His absence is most acutely felt in the ongoing national conversation about India’s economic soul.

Yechury’s contributions were monumental in their depth and consistency. For over four decades, he was the Communist Party of India’s (CPI(M)’s) most articulate and profound voice, a parliamentarian who could dissect a budget speech with surgical precision, and a writer whose essays in party journals like People's Democracy and other national newspapers provided a coherent Marxist analysis of the trajectory of the nation's journey. Beyond the high politics of Delhi, his life was dedicated to the struggles of workers, farmers and the marginalised, seeing in their mobilisation the true engine of democratic change.

It was Sitaram Yechury, who as a central committee member of the party, presented the ideological resolution: 'On Certain Ideological Issues,' at the 14th party congress in 1992. In the immediate aftermath of the disintegration of the USSR and capitalist restoration in the former socialist countries in the East Europe – an event that shook the global communist movement and was seized upon by opponents to proclaim the "end of history" and the death of Marxism – this document provided the ideological bedrock for the CPI(M) to navigate the new world order adhering to the foundational commitment to scientific socialism and the transformation of society by way of proletarian revolution. 

It correctly upheld the four fundamental contradictions and the central role of the contradiction between imperialism and socialism, forecasting that ‘any of these four (fundamental contradictions) can intensify so as to come to the forefront of world developments at a point of time without replacing the central contradiction (the contradiction between imperialism and socialism).’ 

The ideological resolution held the party's mast steady in the stormy sea of confusions created by imperialist propaganda and the postmodernist ideological hurricane. In that party congress, Sitaram was elected to the politburo.

On caste and class in Indian politics

In a 1997 Sundarayya memorial lecture, Yechury explained that the caste system, while a complex social and cultural superstructure, is fundamentally rooted in pre-capitalist economic formations. He asserted that any genuine effort to dismantle "this sinful heritage" must therefore primarily target the economic base – specifically, the vestiges of feudalism and semi-feudalism through a comprehensive agrarian revolution. 

However, he crucially clarified, drawing on Engels, that while this economic transformation is the essential first step, it will not automatically eradicate caste consciousness. The superstructure of caste oppression and its social reincarnations will persist as a recurring scourge; and that phenomenon necessitates intense ideological struggle to get it thoroughly eliminated. Yechury concluded by lamenting a historic missed opportunity, arguing that India’s best chance for such a sweeping revolution was during the anti-colonial freedom struggle, but it was forfeited due to the compromising nature of the leadership.

Therefore, his firm stand was that annihilation of caste would only be possible through it being an inclusive part of class struggle for, without economic empowerment, the annihilation of caste could not be achieved at all. He later symbolised it with the slogan: “Those who raise Lal Salam and Jai Bhim together must raise Inquilab Zindabad”.

Class analysis of the Modi era

As a leading Marxist theoretician and the general secretary of the CPI(M), Yechury made a significant contribution to contemporary Indian political discourse by advancing the concrete analysis of the emerging class conflicts. His work has been pivotal in framing major popular struggles, such as the farmers' movement, not as isolated grievances but as a result of new class conflict “between the big bourgeoisie in collaboration with international finance capital and the entire peasantry, including sections of the rich peasants”. 

Furthermore, he consistently highlighted that “conflicts amongst the ruling class partners are also emerging between the big bourgeoisie, on the one hand, and the non-big bourgeoisie, particularly those belonging to the Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises (MSME) sector, on the other” also have come up. 

This theoretical framework provides a critical lens for understanding the centralising and corporatising thrust of current economic policies, arguing that they inherently favour a narrow oligarchy at the expense of vast sections of workers, farmers, and small businesses.

INDIA bloc

Sitaram Yechury played a significant, though characteristically principled and critical, role in the formation of the INDIA (Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance) bloc. Operating from a position of steadfast opposition to the Modi government's communalism and neoliberal policies, Yechury was instrumental in advocating for a platform that moved beyond mere electoral arithmetic to articulate a clear secular and democratic alternative. He consistently argued that the alliance's foundation must be an explicit and unwavering commitment to economic sovereignty, secularism, the protection of federalism, and the defense of India's democratic institutions, thereby ensuring the bloc addressed the core threats posed by the ruling regime. 

While maintaining the CPI(M)'s political independence and critiquing the policies of other alliance partners, Yechury's leadership was vital in building the necessary consensus to unite a diverse group of regional and national parties, making the INDIA bloc a tangible political reality. 

Notably, the BJP's seat tally in the Lok Sabha election was dropped by 63 from 303 to 240, placing it well below the half way mark, forcing them to heavily depend on alliance partners. The BJP also failed to attain a majority in Uttar Pradesh.

Architect of the critique: Deconstructing 'Modinomics'

In the last decade, Yechury’s most significant and persistent battle was his intellectual crusade against the economic policies of the Narendra Modi government, which he succinctly and critically termed 'Modinomics'. For Yechury, this was not merely an economic model of liberalisation – which previous governments had also pursued – but a distinct and dangerous political-economic project. 

He argued that ‘Modinomics’ was designed to systematically dismantle India’s public sector and transfer the nation's wealth and assets into the hands of a select few corporates, all under the veneer of fervent nationalist rhetoric.

His critique was meticulously structured, moving beyond partisan soundbites to present a holistic, data-backed indictment. He framed the term ‘Modinomics’ as a system that served the interests of big capital at the expense of the common citizen, exacerbating every existing fault line in the Indian economy.

On assault on public sector and strategic sell-offs

Yechury viewed the public sector as the foundational pillar of a self-reliant India, built from the sacrifices of its citizens. The aggressive privatisation drive, which he termed as the "auctioning of the nation," was therefore anathema to his core beliefs. He saw the sale of stakes in behemoths like Life Insurance Company and the opening of railways and defence to private players not as reform but as a historic betrayal.

On May 17, 2023, he tweeted:

"One of India’s most valuable public sector companies, LIC had a market capitalisation of ₹5.48 L Cr when the IPO was launched. This fell to ₹3.59 L Cr a year later-colossal erosion of nearly ₹2L Cr. Modi loot of our national assets & people’s savings.”.

He argued that this was not about efficiency but about appropriation. The profits of these PSUs, which should have fuelled social welfare schemes and public investment, were instead being redirected to private shareholders, creating a massive transfer of public wealth into private coffers.

The agrarian crisis and penetration of the international finance capital

Yechury’s analysis of the now-repealed farm laws was characteristically prescient. He framed them as the ultimate manifestation of Modinomics' pro-corporate tilt. He argued that dismantling the mandi system and encouraging contract farming would not empower farmers but would make them fatally vulnerable to the volatile whims of international agri-business corporations, utterly destroying their bargaining power and India's food security.

In a letter to Prime Minister Modi on June 15, 2017, three years earlier of the farmers strike in Delhi he wrote:

“I am writing to you to demand that your government introduce and pass a legislation in the forthcoming monsoon session of Parliament which not only confers on farmers the Right to Sell at MSP, but also guarantees an automatic annual review of the MSP which will be, at least, 50 per cent more than the comprehensive production costs as established by the Commission on Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP) for that year”.

His solidarity with the farmers' movement was active and vocal, rooted in his understanding that the laws were a deliberate move to pave the way for the further acceleration of the penetration of the international finance capital to the Indian agriculture sector.

Demonetisation gambit and the illusion of formalisation

While many critics focused on the immediate chaos of demonetisation, Yechury’s critique was more structural. 

He saw it as a "Tughlaqi firman" (a poorly conceived or disastrous decree) that served multiple purposes for Modinomics: it provided a shock doctrine to accelerate digitalisation for big tech firms, weakened the informal sector (which employs over 80% of the workforce) and allowed a massive transfer of deposits into the banking system which could then be leveraged to lend to large corporations. 

He called it a "colossal failure" that crippled small businesses and ended lives, while failing utterly in its stated objectives of curbing black money and counterfeit currency.

On jobs crisis and hollow growth

Yechury consistently hammered the government on its failure to generate employment, juxtaposing the grand promise of a USD 5 trillion economy with the grim reality of unemployment rates hitting multi-decade highs. He derided "joblessness" as a contradiction that only benefited a handful of cronies.

On April 27, 2019, he tweeted:

"All the perfumes of Arabia...” will not be able to distract from the mess this Modi govt has made of the Economy. Helping cronies loot and scoot while the rest of India got only Jumlas and fudged data. Joblessness is the worst in at least 45 years.

He linked this crisis directly to the government's policies, the weakening of labour laws, the cuts in public investment in key job-creating sectors, and the devastation of MSMEs first by demonetisation and then by the GST.

The inequality chasm

Yechury frequently cited data from Oxfam and other agencies to highlight the terrifying rise in inequality under Modinomics. For him, this was the undeniable proof of the model's fundamental failure.

On March 3, 2021, he tweeted:

"Modi's policies sharply widened the gap between super rich & common people. Obscene levels of inequality-one person earns ₹90 crore in 1 hour and 1/4th of Indians live on ₹3K a month. Unite in struggles to end this cruelty”

He argued that tax policies favouring the rich, combined with cuts in social sector spending on health and education, were consciously designed to deepen this divide, creating an oligarchy rather than a democracy.

Void in the tariff conversation

The US tariffs on Indian imports have been typically framed in binary terms: a diplomatic spat or a ‘necessary evil’ in a larger geopolitical game. Yechury would have perhaps reframed it as the impact of the gravity of the aggravating crisis of finance capital. His voice is missing from the debate because he would have asked foundational questions that others gloss over.

Yechury was a fierce critic of what he saw as the Modi government’s subservience to US interests, often at the expense of India’s strategic autonomy. On April 7, 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic, he criticised Modi’s decision to lift the ban on the export of some of the essential drugs to the US under Trump’s retaliation threat:

"By succumbing to US pressures once again Modi has exposed the hollowness of his propaganda of championing ‘nationalism’. Asked us to light candles while he compromises our fight against Covid by lifting the ban on drug exports for Trump’s benefit."

In the context of talks to resolve the tariff issue, he would have warned against a deal that forces India to open its agricultural sector to US capitalist corporations that could devastate workers and farmers.

The alternative vision of self-reliance

For Yechury, ‘Atmanirbharta’ wasn’t a slogan; it was a fundamental principle. And his version of self-reliance differed radically from that of the Modi regime. He saw genuine self-reliance as being built on a strong public sector, robust domestic demand fuelled by wages and welfare and strategic protection for nascent industries.

On the Union government’s decision to privatise the Vizag steel plant, on February 9, 2021, he tweeted:

“Navratna, profit making company, 20K employees, 1lakh indirect employment; all this has no meaning to Modi govt's policy of selling PSUs to its cronies. PSUs were built after a prolonged people’s struggle for self-reliant India. Rescind this decision”

The US tariff issue underscores the enduring relevance of Yechury’s economic outlook. The questions of who wins and who loses in global trade, how to protect national economic sovereignty, and how to ensure that workers are not collateral damage in geopolitical games are more critical than ever.

Yechury provided a cohesive, sharp and ideologically grounded counter-narrative. He could connect a farmer's suicide in Maharashtra, a laid-off factory worker in Bengaluru and an unemployed graduate in rural India to a larger, systemic failure of economic policy. He was a compass that consistently pointed towards structural issues when the political debate often got lost in the fog of cultural wars.

The void is multi-dimensional. It is the absence of a leader who could bridge the gap between intellectual Marxist theory and mass political mobilisation. It is the silence of a voice that fiercely spoke for a broader, socialistic idea of India – equitable, pluralistic and just. In a parliament and media landscape increasingly dominated by noise and spectacle, he was a voice of reason, armed with facts, history and an unshakeable moral consistency. 

The best tribute to his memory is to consistently address the questions he posed: Who does the economy serve? Who does growth belong to? How do we build an India where prosperity is not a privilege for a few, but a right for all? 

His legacy is a reminder that politics must be anchored in ideology and a clear-eyed analysis of class reality. His economic outlook, often dismissed as outdated by his detractors, has been vindicated by the very inequalities, crises and emerging contradictions he warned against.

Nidhin V.S. is a researcher and student of law.

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