The question impinging in the minds of the political observers now is whether Marxism is going to wither away in India?  Barring West Bengal and Kerala, the ‘Leftists’ have never been able to dominate any other state in India. Now the only state with a Chief Minister belonging to the CPI(M) is Tripura. No doubt with a very clean image, whiter than white and with an unassuming wife who regularly travels to office in rickshaws, Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar is a nice example of rare honesty among politicians. Even then, it is also not sure as to how long he can stick to an increasingly sticky wicket, as slowly and steadily the political climate in India is tilting in favour of the centrists and rightists. Are the days of left-ism drawing to an end?  It would appear so and the comrades having gradually being sidelined even in the Barak Valley of south Assam over the last decade and half though it is a contiguous area with Tripura as well as an old bastion of the left parties is indicative of this. Nurul Huda, a veteran leader of CPI(M) who is at present a central committee member of their party and resides in Delhi, originally hails from Barak valley. He had represented Silchar both in the Legislative Assembly of Assam as well as in the Parliament of India for a brief stint. But his party could not retain these seats. Now their party is fighting only a symbolic fight.

Samiran Acharya, the Secretary of Cachar district committee of CPI (M) accepted that they have not able to keep pace with the changing times and their cadres today are demoralized. “Most importantly,” he said, “our party is facing huge financial crunch as today the mainstream political parties such as the Congress and the BJP are spending huge amounts of money during elections.”  Parimal Kanti Paul, who had contested from Silchar on a CPI(M) ticket during the Assam Assembly elections this year is also of this opinion as he has said, “We cannot compete financially with our opponents”.  Perhaps herein lies the problem. Financial strength of a political party is required, but one cannot win elections only on the basis of ‘money power’ today. And for the left parties, it was the other way all along. They collected money from the people and they won elections after elections as a poor party of the poor people. In a democracy it’s the unshakable support of the people that is needed by a political party to reach its desired destination.

Samiran Acharya, the Secretary of Cachar district committee of CPI (M) accepted that they have not able to keep pace with the changing time and their cadres today are demoralized.

The veteran CPI(M) stalwart Nurul Huda himself in a telephonic interview with this scribe however sites a completely different reason for the decline, when he says: “Our organization today has become very weak. The cadre are not in a position to carry out the programmes of the party to the masses. In fact we have not been able to give proper leadership in the Silchar-Lumding BG line issue. I would also say that the meteoric rise of the communal forces has also hit hard our poll prospects in Barak Valley. We have also not been able to bring to the fore the various scams that rocked Assam during the Congress regime.”

Clearly he does not have a clue why his party maintains a ‘stoic silence’ when corruption and nepotism deprives many eligible candidates of Barak Valley in state government appointments. Many genuine citizens of the Valley are being harassed in the name of ‘D-Voters’. What has the CPI(M) done for this hapless lot?

In summary, if this remains the attitude of the party, then in Silchar the contest will be restricted only between the Congress and BJP and this is indeed not going to help Barak Valley as our Constitution envisages multi-party democracy and not bi-party democracy. People today can no longer be considered to be politically naïve. The comrades need to understand that if they are interested in reviving their ‘political fortune’ in Barak Valley, then they should start their revival campaign from Silchar as this constituency occupies a very significant position in the political landscape of Assam. Out of the three states that are in the kitty of the left front, two are gone and the lone state of Tripura cannot fetch them the kind of political mileage in the hurly burly affairs of Indian polity. They need to change their age old mindsets because it cannot be denied that even China today has realized that in today’s globalised world, the need of the hour is to keep pace with the times or else it will be difficult for them to hold their post. If the comrades of India wish to transform their abhorrent image in Barak Valley, then the party needs to come out with out of the box solutions. Comrades- just think about it!