CPM aims for Bengal reboot with young faces in LS poll fray: ‘From zero to a new Left’

Another bystander also steps up to apparently hand over a few crumpled currency notes in his clenched fist as party fund donation. “Best of luck, carry on the good work” they whispered in Rehman’s ears.

Similar scenes have been witnessed in several Lok Sabha constituencies of South Bengal. Aiming for its revival and rejuvenation, the Bengal CPI(M) has again fielded its several youth leaders in the polls, including Pratikur Rehman, Srijan Bhattacharya and Dipsita Dhar, who were earlier elevated from their national leadership positions in the party’s student wing SFI to its candidates in the 2021 Assembly elections.

“If college campuses can produce good doctors, lawyers and teachers, why not good politicians? Our aim is to change the system,” says Rehman, talking to The Indian Express in a small anteroom on the first floor of the non-airconditioned party office.

When asked how difficult the turnaround would be, considering that the Congress and Left had together failed to win a seat in the 2021 polls, Rehman says, “Zero is relative. Leftists believe it’s the beginning… There is no space for hopelessness. We’re motivated by the fact that it’s a fresh start, to build a structure on which people can stand up — a new Left, a new CPI(M).”

On the road, Rehman could be seen greeting and reaching out to people, stopping at crossings to be garlanded by small groups of CPI(M) workers. That’s the easy part. The difficult part is taking on the Trinamool Congress (TMC) Number 2 and sitting MP Abhishek Banerjee in the Diamond Harbour seat with the support of its ally Congress.

After its decimation in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the CPI(M) had initiated a process of pitchforking its youth faces from the lower rungs of the organisation into the electoral arena. By the 2021 Assembly polls, the names of Minakshi Mukherjee, Srijan Bhattacharya, Dipsita Dhar, Pratikur Rahman, Oishi Mukherjee, Sayan Banerjee, Kalatan Dasgupta and Sonamani Tudu had begun to be known.

Although the party also drew a blank in the Assembly elections, with merely 7% of the total vote share, its young candidates made their mark.

Salim says, “For Bengal’s resurgence, we need a rejuvenated Left. That is not possible without revamping the CPI(M), which is only possible with the youth. We have to bring the youth upfront, which we did during the Insaaf Yatra (CPI-M’s statewide campaign in 2023). The question is not how many seats we have, but whether we are fighting for Bengal’s resurgence, and to save the Constitution and democracy.”

The CPI(M)’s youth policy began to pay small dividends in the statewide 2022 municipal and 2023 panchayat elections. In many districts, the party increased its vote share from 7% to over 20%, encouraging it to continue with the policy in this year’s Lok Sabha polls, alongside senior leaders and former MPs like Salim, Sujan Chakraborty and Alokesh Das. It has also launched an online campaign keeping young voters in mind, with the party website featuring an AI avatar of former CM Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and an AI news anchor “Samata”.

Srijan Bhattacharya

About 20 km away, in a house in Kolkata’s southern neighbourhood of Naktala, Srijan Bhattacharya, the CPI(M) candidate for the prestigious Jadavpur seat, is sitting down to eat a simple meal of alu bhaja, dal and patla machher jhol (fried potatoes, pulses and light fish curry).

“Our party is undergoing a revival. Salim da (Md Salim) had mentioned somewhere the ‘Left’s resurrection’… that’s the key word. The conscious decision to connect with the youth is part of this revival. Because the youth represent the bulk of the population. To do that, the party decided to bring forth young members as communicators,” says Srijan, speaking to The Indian Expess.

“We have already seen some results. We’ll see what happens in the current elections, but the real benefit is the positive perception about the Left we’ve created among the people,” he says.

Srijan is pitted against the TMC’s Sayoni Ghosh and the BJP’s Anirban Ganguly.

“The 34 years of Left rule was built upon years of struggle that created a positive perception. This was hurt, and we lost. By allowing the youth to again lead from the front has helped us communicate better, in today’s language… As a candidate, I can feel the perception changing once again… others too, I’m sure,” he claims.

On what he would say in Parliament in the event of his win, he says, “On the first day, I’ll say that it took us 60 years to make education a fundamental right, 14 years ago. After 77 years of the Republic, it is now time to make employment another fundamental right. On the second day, I’ll say that if we increase corporate wealth tax by 1-2%, we can prevent 8,000 schools in Bengal alone from being shut down. One can spend more on education and health sectors,” the CPI(M)’s candidate says.

“The CPI(M) was invisible in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. Not today. People are talking about us, discussing us. Rest is about rising to the challenge by transforming from ‘bhalo chhele (good boy)’ to ‘bhalo pratinidhi (good public representative)’,” he adds.

When asked about the CPI(M)’s rebranding with the use of AI, he says, “We can’t address 25-year-olds like we do 60-year-olds. Our previous generation has seen Buddha Babu (Buddhadeb Bhattacharya). We have seen less of him. The next generation did not see him at all. What is wrong if Buddha Babu reaches out to them through AI? We are changing the form. Where there was only parody, we see the possibility of other things, without diluting the seriousness of the message.”

Dipsita Dhar

Around 100 km from Jadavpur, Dipsita Dhar is holding a rally at Serampore. At 9 am near the Dankuni railway station, the CPI(M) area committee office is packed with hundreds of CPI(M) workers, the narrow bylane outside blocked by a few e-rickshaws (commonly called totos in Bengal) decorated with red flags and banners, waiting for the 30-year-old candidate with a PhD in Geography from the JNU.

Sitting in a small room at the party office, Dipsita tells The Indian Express: “It is true that since 2019, we did not win any seats, but our vote percentage has begun to increase. We did well in the bypolls, and increased our vote share in the panchayat and municipal elections. Everything won’t change one fine morning. After 34 years of Left rule, an anti-incumbency had built up in this state. But, within a few years, people understood that this alternative is unacceptable. Mamata Banerjee’s narrative has long failed, but meanwhile, after Narendra Modi’s win at the Centre in 2014, a religious polarisation emerged in West Bengal that continued till 2021. Since then, the process of breaking that binary began, and I strongly believe that in 2024, it will be further broken. This time, Left spaces will increase in Bengal.”

She also says, “It is true that we are at zero, and it’s demoralising. But our party is not poll-centric. We are into building people’s movements, which gave us poll success in the past — be it over the alleged murder of Aliah University student Anis Khan, protest against the school job scam or to demand the right to education. During the Covid lockdowns, we were on the street with our canteens, helping affected people, all of which raised the Left’s social acceptance. After 2011, not only was the political Left decimated in the state, but also the space for the social Left. During this resurgence, the social Left is helping rebuild the political Left. The silver lining is that a bunch of leaders have emerged in the process.”

Dipsita is taking on the TMC veteran and incumbent MP Kalyan Banerjee and the BJP’s Kabir Shankar Bose.

If elected, she says, she would build washrooms for unorganised women labourers, especially transport workers. On why she is in the CPI(M), she says, “The turning point in our lives was the Left’s 2011 loss. We realised that to save Leftist ideology, we need ideologically rooted people. Being the daughter of a ‘refugee family’ — my grandfather arrived from East Bengal without a penny in his pocket — the red flag gave us land, employment. We are grateful for that. My father was a factory worker. I know how CITU’s movements helped the factory continue its production, which helped me dream of a PhD. I feel a liability and gratefulness to defend the red flag when it is under attack.”