The Left in India consists of a variety of political formations that have occasionally had bitter disputes with each other but yet represent a relatively unified grouping held together by a politics with a distinct ideology. The year 2026 also marks 100 years of the Left in India. The CPI(M) has been the largest component of the Left, especially in traditional Left strongholds like Kerala, West Bengal, and Tripura. In Bihar, however, the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation is the most influential Left party.

In 2006, the Left Front in West Bengal achieved a record seventh successive victory in the State Assembly election, while the Left Democratic Front (LDF) wrested Kerala from the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF). The Left was also at that time in power in Tripura. The 2004 parliamentary election had given the Left 60 seats in the Lok Sabha and thrown out Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government.

The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government that replaced it depended on Left support for survival. In the 20 years that have passed since 2006, the last 12 of them with the BJP ruling at the Centre, the electoral fortunes of the Left have dipped significantly. The recent Assembly election results appear to confirm the trend, with the Left removed from power in Kerala.

The Left has long lost its numerical strength in Parliament. But now, for the first time in decades, the Left does not head any State government. The loss, however, should be seen in the context of how the LDF breached a decades-old tradition in 2021 to come to power for a second successive term in Kerala. In a State with no previous history of a government being voted in for a second straight term, the 2021 mandate appeared to be a special endorsement of the Pinarayi Vijayan government’s policies.

Mandate in West Bengal

The mandate in West Bengal is perhaps the more significant development. After losing the State in 2011 following an uninterrupted 34 years in power, the Left Front went on to win in Tripura in 2013 and extended its unbroken tenure there to 35 years. When it was finally defeated in Tripura in 2018, the BJP emerged as the victor and repeated that success five years later. In contrast, in West Bengal, the shift from the Left to the Right was not quite instantaneous.

The Left in Bengal was supplanted by Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress. The Trinamool’s 15-year rule ended in 2026 with a BJP victory in a bitterly contested election amid a controversial voter revision exercise by the Election Commission of India. The verdict appeared to reflect a strong anti-incumbency sentiment against the Trinamool, but it did not result in the Left recovering lost ground. Instead, it was the BJP, a party located on the other end of the political spectrum, that benefited from the situation..

In Tamil Nadu, Left support has been critical to the formation of the new Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam government. But the Left was also part of the alliance led by the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) that was voted out of power. The mandate in Tamil Nadu, therefore, can be seen as a confirmation of the general decline in the Left’s electoral fortunes in the country.

This brings us to the question of whether the Left in India is in irreversible decline as politics shifts to the Right. Or is this a temporary phase that the Left can and will reverse?

Is the Left rendered irrelevant?

The defeat in Kerala and the inability of the Left to recover decisively in West Bengal and Tripura have led to the perception that it has been rendered irrelevant. Theories also abound about the imploding of the INDIA bloc, a political coalition of close to 30 non-BJP and non-NDA parties that was forged in the run-up to the 2024 parliamentary election.

The Left along with the Congress, the DMK, the Trinamool Congress, the Samajwadi Party, the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), and several other regional allies were the prime forces behind the alliance. A combination of intelligent seat-sharing and a shared commitment to uphold secular values in opposition to the BJP’s communal politics yielded results for the INDIA bloc in 2024. Although the NDA was able to form the government, its overall tally came down and was nowhere near its fatuous chaar sau paar (beyond 400) claim.

For the Left leadership, therefore, the setbacks in Kerala, West Bengal, and Tripura do not automatically invalidate either the INDIA experiment or the broader politics of secular opposition unity.

D. Raja, CPI general secretary, said: “We lost in Kerala, could not revive in West Bengal. The coalition we were part of in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry was defeated. The defeat of the Left in the recent elections is a matter of serious concern. Parliamentary democracy has relevance from the panchayat to parliament. Communists made history by breaking one-party rule in 1957, a historic moment that was recognised the world over.

Recently, Amit Shah talked of ‘umbrella rule’ by which he means ‘one nation, one party’. The right wing will use the situation to consolidate its fascist regime. The Left should go to the people, take up livelihood issues. The future of the Left is linked to the future of India. It may have declined electorally, but ideologically it is relevant. Politically and ideologically, we are the alternative.”

“The future of the Left is linked to the future of India. It may have declined electorally but ideologically it is relevant. Politically and ideologically, we are the alternative.”D. RajaGeneral secretary, CPI

The importance of the Left cannot be judged solely in terms of electoral successes or failures. That is not to discount the significance of winning seats in the legislature: it is only when a party has people’s representatives in elected bodies that it can leave a mark on the crafting of policies in line with its political vision. The Left’s vision, rooted in policies aimed at ensuring social, economic, and political justice for all, perhaps comes closest to adhering to the spirit of the Constitution. 

It was during the term of the first UPA government that the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme was introduced and the historic Forest Rights Act passed. The Left has been the only political force to talk about the deleterious impact of neoliberalism on the lives of ordinary people, against large-scale privatisation of public resources, and the near stagnant public expenditure on public utilities such as health and education.

Neoliberalism and the Left trajectory

Speaking to Frontline, Prabhat Patnaik, emeritus professor at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, JNU, said that neoliberalism, which restricts the possibility of class politics, could perhaps explain the difficulties faced by the Left. In that sense, the weakening of the Left is not surprising. But Patnaik also contended that classical neoliberalism had reached an end. Even as global finance capital remains mobile, US President Donald Trump has departed from classical neoliberalism by pushing unequal trade arrangements on countries such as India and pursuing military control over Third World resources such as oil—an approach that according to Patnaik underlies the war on Iran.

Patnaik added that India now faces an economic crisis under the neoliberal regime, one that will be compounded by the imperialist strategy of passing on the burden to workers, peasants, petty producers, and even small capitalists here. The Left alone, he said, could mobilise the people, and even other political forces, to go beyond neoliberalism and its current political counterpart of neo-fascism.

“We are coming to a peculiar situation where remaining within neoliberalism will bring great misery to the people through austerity and mass unemployment. But going beyond neoliberalism will also not be without pain, with capital controls, import controls, rationing, and such like. The Left, which alone can take the latter course and take others along, can only ensure that the poor suffer less in the transition. But an immense historical possibility is opening up for the Left. I only hope the Left will not be too scared to take up the challenge, for that would only prolong the period in which the people are left in this limbo,” he said.

The Left also plays a role in safeguarding secularism and democracy against attacks from neo-fascist elements that are in alliance with monopoly capital. “The unity of all political forces against neo-fascism that the Left must take the lead in organising must have a certain economic agenda. I believe the introduction of a set of fundamental economic rights in the Constitution would be an appropriate response, but there will be opposition to such an agenda even among the elements that the Left would try to organise against neo-fascism. In such a case, only a subset of the agenda, say a national health service, or free quality education provided by public institutions from primary school to university, can be agreed upon and presented before the people. The Left must play a major role in organising a credible anti-neo-fascist front,” said Patnaik.

Manoj Kumar Jha, Rajya Sabha MP from the RJD, believes the Left cannot be written off. “After each election, everyone looks for the big picture, which is misleading. Every State election is grounded in the reality of that State. The LDF won two successive elections, which no one expected, and this time the UDF won. Now if the material conditions are getting precarious day by day, an ideology like that of the Left can never be irrelevant. Even rightward-leaning parties have a leftward take on things. Electorally, no one can deny that this has been one of the worst performances of the Left since 1952. But it would be premature to write its obituary. When an obituary is written for an ideology like the Left, it is akin to writing the obituary of the idea of India. But there has to be more innovation, some new thinking within the Left so that a new generation comes on board. The Left used to be our natural choice when we were students. Now it is not,” he told Frontline. 

Unlike most Indian parties, which are primarily oriented towards elections and government formation, the Left has always had a wider domain for its political activity. It has had an organisational presence even in States where it does not count as a significant electoral force and has played a key role in several movements. In several sectors like education, banking, and insurance, and the public sector in general, the Left has exerted significant influence in trade unions, which has slowed down the process of exploitation and privatisation.

Even today the Adivasi Adhikar Rashtriya Manch, a mass organisation of the CPI(M), takes up forest rights issues of forest-dwellers, implementation of the Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act, violations of the rights of gram sabhas, and so on. Be it campaigns against the women’s reservation Bill, electoral bonds, the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, “bulldozer” justice, or the new Labour Codes, the Left has consistently spoken up.

Burning issues and the challenges before the Left

Two pertinent questions arise from this. The first relates to the uneven development of the Left: even before the recent reverses, the presence and strength of the Left in the rest of the country did not follow the trajectory of Kerala, West Bengal, and Tripura. The Left remained confined as an electoral force mainly in these three States even during the long period of its rule in West Bengal, along with a small presence in Tamil Nadu and Bihar. It saw a relative decline in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. Do the roots of the Left’s current predicament, then, lie in its inability to grow as a national force, especially in the Hindi heartland?

The second question is one of voice. Across the country, the issues that the Left always champions and which have marked out its distinct space appear to be the burning issues of the present, as Professor Patnaik said.

The epic farmers’ struggle, which forced the Modi government to backtrack on three farm laws, or the more recent eruptions in Noida on the issue of wages and working conditions of workers, and in the Samsung establishment in Tamil Nadu over the right to form associations are illustrative of this. The nation’s landscape is, in fact, dotted with such battles against the increasing concentration of wealth and income and the gross inequalities afflicting the nation. Why then is the Left not able to ride this current and grow?

The challenge for the Left is to channelise the churning aspirations for change in society—among women, young people, workers, marginalised and oppressed groups everywhere—into a unified programme. Communal polarisation, the increasing undermining of the institutions of India’s secular democracy, and the role of money power in elections are some of the difficulties that not just the Left but any opposition party faces. How the Left views the caste question and the role of women in contemporary India and the disparate political tendencies thrown up by these will be significant. Can India afford a demise of the Left? If it cannot, then how does the Left plan to live up to its great responsibility?

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