Opinion Challenge for new CPM secretary M V Govindan in Kerala: To hone and amplify party’s voice in its last citadel

The appointment of M V Govindan as secretary of the Kerala unit of the CPM comes at a crucial time for the party. Govindan, currently state local development and excise minister, replaces Kodiyeri Balakrishnan, a seasoned and controversial politician, who has been ailing for some time. The change of guard is significant — Kerala is the last citadel of the CPM, the only state in India where left ideology continues to have political salience and where it recently won an unprecedented second term in office and is transitioning from a cadre-based outfit to a mass party. This transition is taking place when the party leadership is seen to have become subservient to the office of the chief minister, which controls both the party apparatus and the state machinery. Govindan, 69, could rearrange the balance of power between the government and the party. His will also be the challenge of ensuring that the party’s voice and influence, which has always been disproportionate to its numbers, can be salvaged in times when, except in Kerala, it is inexorably shrinking.

Govindan has been the quintessential party ideologue, involved in conducting party classes for cadres. However, excessive dependence on party literature can become a liability in an age of slick communication and the dwindling of jargon. The CPM in Kerala has been growing at a rapid pace, it has become a party of the establishment in the state. This, surely, would help it in meeting electoral challenges but it can also lead to organisational stasis and public alienation, as happened in West Bengal and Tripura, where the CPM went into a rapid decline after decades in office. The compulsions of a mass party are also very different from that of a cadre party, as it has to meet the demands of a varied and layered support base.

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Though Kerala’s success in building a welfare state has been the subject of much academic discussion and debate, the Left has been unsuccessful in projecting it as a governance model — in the manner of Gujarat under Narendra Modi, for instance, or Delhi under Arvind Kejriwal has been championed by their respective parties. With the Congress in decline, there is an opportunity now for Opposition-run states to play a larger role in the pushback to BJP dominance. For the Kerala CPM, the challenge lies in both government and ideology: Its government will have to further improve the delivery of public services and goods, and the organisation will need to re-articulate its larger political vision.

This editorial first appeared in the print edition on August 30, 2022, under the title, ‘Change of guard’