It's Now Or Never

• The party reverted to a three-tier central leadership.
• The post of deputy general secretary was revived and the 'organisation man', A.B. Bardhan, nominated to it. Indrajit Gupta was asked to continue as general secretary.
• A sizeable number of fresh and comparatively young faces were inducted into various decision-making bodies, 33 in the National Council and seven in the National Executive.
• It was made mandatory for all party members holding elected posts (at all levels) and the leadership to declare their assets every three years.

According to party sources, the CPI is likely to use this commitment to Left unity in its attempt to emerge as the umbrella communist party before engaging in any serious parleys with the CPI(M) on the merger issue.

While another likely upshot of Bardhan's induction will be greater coordination with the National Front, organisational matters will probably take up most of his time. A concerted drive to increase party membership is the need of the hour. Says party Secretary A.K. Anjaan: "Students, once the mainstay of the party, have been keeping away." For example, in Lucknow the CPI's student wing, the AISF, had a strength of over 20,000 between 1979 and 1985 but has now been reduced to about 3,000. In this regard, plans are being drawn up by the CPI to augment its traditional agenda by including environment related concerns to attract students.

Drives to increase membership in rural areas (rural workers and poor peasants constitute about 55 per cent of the CPI membership of over 4.5 lakh) and improve the procedure for recording membership data are also in the pipeline. On the agenda are mass movements on issues which affect the small farmer, like rising prices and patents on seeds and fertiliser.

Bardhan, who pushed hard for the mandatory declaration of assets by elected party members, says the issue of corruption was raised at the congress because "we are not immune to this trend Another trend that the CPI has to watch out for is internal bickering. With general elections round the corner, party sources believe that while leaders like Indrajit Gupta and Chaturanan Mishra will pull out all the stops to prevent the BJP from coming to power, Bardhan will oppose any move to support the Congress, even if only to keep the BJP out.

Says a senior party leader: "The danger is that the power struggle in the CPI may negate any good that has come out of the party congress." But whether the CPI has done enough to avoid the Marxist endgame of "one step forward and two steps backwards" is anybody's guess.