What is left of the Left

Agartala is nearly 4,000 km away from Thiruvananthapuram, the capital of Kerala. Events, political or otherwise, in the northeastern state rarely make any noise here in the south. But earlier this year, on March 3 to be precise, as the BJP seeped its way into Tripura, a Left citadel for a quarter of a century, strong aftershocks were felt here on the southwestern coast. When counting of votes in the Assembly elections ended that day, it became clear that Tripura had fallen out of the Communist grip too, seven years after West Bengal was lost in a similar fashion. Shortly after the CPM’s Tripura rout, IndianExpress.com travels to the ground in Kerala, which holds the last vestige of democratically-elected Communist power in India, to check if its roots are still intact.