India's communists once ruled millions. What happened to them?

India's communists once ruled millions. What happened to them?6 hours agoShareSaveAdd as preferred on GoogleSoutik BiswasIndia correspondentAFP via Getty ImagesThe communists have been reduced to a single seat in the 294-member assembly in West BengalFor the first time since 1957, India no longer has a single communist-led state government.The defeat of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) in Kerala this month, after a decade in power, marked the end - at least for now - of one of the world's most enduring experiments in democratic communism.At their peak, India's communist parties ruled states stretching from West Bengal to Kerala and Tripura. They impacted the lives of more than 100 million people through trade unions, peasant organisations, student wings and disciplined cadre networks.In West Bengal, the Left Front governed continuously from 1977 to 2011 - one of the world's longest-running elected communist administrations. In Tripura, the Left ruled for 35 years in all, including an uninterrupted 25-year stretch before its defeat by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2018.Kerala followed a different trajectory. Since 1957 - when the state voted for one of the world's first elected communist governments under EMS Namboodiripad - power has alternated between the Left and the Congress, making the communists a durable force but never a permanently dominant one.In 1996, Jyoti Basu, a founding member of CPI (M) and then West Bengal's chief minister, came within touching distance of becoming India's prime minister as head of a coalition government. But his party rejected the offer - a decision Basu would later famously describe as a "historic blunder".The communists shaped coalition politics in Delhi so deeply that in 2008 they withdrew support from former prime minister Manmohan Singh's government over the landmark civil nuclear deal with the US. At th...