Senior leader Prakash Karat admitted on Wednesday that women accounted for just 15.5 per cent of the party’s 10.6-lakh workers and the party wanted to enhance the figure to 25 per cent within three years.

The former general secretary made another candid confession: while the party had 18-20 per cent Dalits, which is incidentally higher than the 16 per cent Dalit population in India, few of them reached the higher committees. The party would want to change this situation, too, as part of its attempt to make its social composition more representative. “We have made an analysis of the social composition of our central and state committees,” Mr. Karat said.

While the CPI(M) has seen itself as representing India’s poor, it has suffered a decline as a result of its loss in West Bengal, one of the few States where it has been traditionally strong. The party has been seen as not being able to address the caste question well enough in the past few decades, when caste became the fulcrum for mobilisation of the disadvantaged in many parts of India, especially in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Socialists who claim allegiance to Ram Manohar Lohia and Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party which has a Dalit base have increased their vote base in the past two-three decades in north India as caste became politically crucial.

CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury, however, disagreed with this charge earlier at the Plenum. He said the Left believed that economic empowerment was the real solution to the problems of Dalits.

The party also wanted to increase its presence among youth, Mr. Karat said. Many believe youth are turning away from the Communist movement, which had had a steady support of the segment since the 1930s. The party saw its grand rally on December 27 as a platform to showcase its reach among this group, despite its decline in West Bengal.