India's Communists fight for survival

AFP ^ | June 6, 2010 | Elizabeth Roche

[nwrep]

NEW DELHI — Tagged as the world's most electorally successful Communist party, the Marxist leaders of West Bengal might finally be nearing the end of more than three decades of uninterrupted power.

The Communist Party of Indian (Marxist), or CPI-M, which has won every election in the eastern Indian state since 1977, is suddenly fighting for survival after suffering a crushing defeat in municipal elections last week.

The party's nemesis is India's mercurial Railways Minister Mamata Banerjee, who heads the Trinamul Congress, a relatively new regional party intent on ending the Communists' long-running monopoly on power in West Bengal.

"For the first time in decades, the Marxists are facing a credible threat. They are looking vulnerable in their bastion," said Saroj Giri, a professor of political science at Delhi University.

The CPI-M has now lost three straight elections in West Bengal in a row -- council, parliamentary and municipal -- and there is little to suggest the result will be any different in state polls due next year.

As India's economy has boomed, the CPI-M's rhetoric has appeared an increasingly uncomfortable fit with the aspirations of newly affluent Indians, while its populist appeal has been stolen by Banerjee's party.

[airborne]

Come to America and work for the Obama Regime. (sarcasm)

[reg45]

The will just become 0bama-bots.

[Happy Rain]

Communists,in spite of the late Indira's flirts with the Soviets,have always had a hard time existing amongst the Hindus—not a people so weak as to fear independent thinking like Muslims do.

The Hindus are freedom loving,industrious and smart—plus they can spell like all get out.

[battousai]

"As India's economy has boomed, the CPI-M's rhetoric has appeared an increasingly uncomfortable fit with the aspirations of newly affluent Indians"

Makes sense why King Obambi and his court jesters want to destroy your economy now doesn't it, happy successful people would never want communists like the Obambi regime running their lives would they now.