Bengal CPM Struggles To Attract Youth Membership

The Bengal CPM’s attempt to put younger leaders in the political spotlight appears to have run into a deeper organisational problem. According to the party’s latest Party Letter No 1, members below 30 constitute just 4.55% of its total membership — a figure the document itself describes as “quite concerning”. The admission, on page three of the document, comes against the backdrop of a sustained effort by the party in recent years to project younger faces in elections as well as organisational positions. Leaders such as Meenakshi Mukherjee, Shatarup Ghosh, Dipita Dhar, Kaltan Dasgupta and Sayan Banerjee have been given greater political visibility over the past five-six years. Mukherjee’s rise has been particularly notable, with her induction into the CPM central committee. The party has also brought in age norms at different levels of its committees, ostensibly to make room for a younger generation. Yet the membership figures suggest that the changes at the leadership level have not translated into a significant shift in the composition of the organisation as a whole. The Party Letter also points to another difficulty: the party continues to struggle to attract members from SC/ST, and minority communities. A state secretariat member attributed the present imbalance to organisational decisions taken two decades or more ago, when, the leader said, the party failed to bring in a number of promising young people because of selective recruitment practices. Over time, that gap widened and became embedded in the organisation. The contrast is particularly significant at a time when a large section of the electorate belongs to Gen Z. For the Bengal CPM, therefore, the challenge is not simply to find younger faces for elections or committees, but to rebuild a wider organisational base that can sustain that transition.