The comrades' new line: CPI(M) needs to bring in new faces in leadership

It is far too dependent for leadership either on those associated with old and discredited Left governments; or with those who have no connection to grassroots politics

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPI(M) is by far the largest of India’s communist parties but, in 2018, that isn’t saying much. From a high water mark in UPA-I, when it was the third biggest bloc in Parliament and helped determine national policy, it has been reduced to a bit player in national politics. It is out of power in its erstwhile bastion of West Bengal, where it may be reduced to the third force in the state’s politics. And its decades-long rule in Tripura has also come to an end. Thus, at one level, the CPI(M)’s just-concluded