NEW DELHI: India's communists have capitalist ills, a leaked internal political report of the country's most powerful mainstream leftist faction, the Communist party of India (Marxist), has revealed. The report which presented at the CPI's (M)20th party congress held at Kozhikode, in the southern state of Kerala has listed sexual harassment of women by the party's cadre officials, popular disconnect with the poor and party leaders' involvement with real estate tycoons, alcoholism, etc, as some of the key reasons the continuous drubbing received by the party across the country. “That shows that in imposing our discipline, in correcting or taking action against party members at various levels, these are the type of charges that have come. That does not mean my party has become a party of alcoholics. I don't think that is the implication,” CPI (M) general secretary Prakash Karat said, not denying the contents of the report. “It only shows that the party knows and is conscious about the problems and there is a willingness to address them,” Karat said. India's left parties, which have ruled in exclusive pockets like West Bengal and Kerala states were wiped out of power from both the states, leaving the left without any seat of power, an unprecedented phenomenon in modern Indian politics.
