The one-hour-long heart-to-heart between Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and CPI state secretary Binoy Viswam on Monday in Alappuzha failed to break the CPM-CPI deadlock over the PM SHRI issue. 

The CPI wanted the Kerala government to terminate the MoU signed with the Union Ministry of Education. The CM said it was not possible at this stage.

The Chief Minister did offer a compromise formula. He said that a Cabinet sub-committee can be formed to oversee the implementation of PM SHRI, to make sure that ideologically unacceptable portions of National Education Policy 2020 were not imported into Kerala. 

The CPI rejected this offer saying that once a signatory, Kerala was legally obliged to adhere to NEP provisions. Binoy Viswam is said to have told the CM that walking out of PM SHRI was the only way for the Left to retain its ideological purity and project itself as the authentic national alternative to the BJP. The CM, in turn, argued that governance at times required tactical compromises. 

After the meeting, the four CPI ministers jointly met the Chief Minister and formally expressed their displeasure at the way the PM SHRI MoU was signed without a discussion in the Cabinet. 

Talking to reporters after the CPI secretariat meeting, the CPI state secretary said the discussion with the Chief Minister was cordial but said the dispute remained unresolved. "Here is what can be said with certainty. There has been no solution for the issues that we have raised," Binoy Viswam said.

He, however, refused to confirm whether his party's ministers would keep away from the next cabinet meeting on October 29. "Our decisions will be conveyed at the appropriate time," is all Viswam would say. 

Highly placed leaders in the CPI told Onmanorama that the CPI leaders would anyway skip the next Cabinet meeting. "We are not looking at it as a symbolic protest. It is an indication that we have begun our fight. The boycott is not the end and that is why the secretary was hesitant to announce it as a decision. The boycott is just the beginning of our fight to prevent the Left from straying from its principles," a top CPI leader said.

The CPI state secretary also hinted that the party could be considering momentous steps than just the boycott of a Cabinet meeting. "The CPI's state and national leadership will discuss the issue and take a call," he said about the party's future course of action. The party is expected to firm up its strategy at the State Council that will be held on November 4.

The remarks of CPI national secretary, D Raja, also made it abundantly clear that this time the CPI is determined to stay the course. "We cannot agree to the NEP 2020. This is a reactionary and very dangerous policy pursued by the BJP government. NEP promotes commercialisation, centralisation and communalisation of education," Raja told reporters in Delhi. 

Here is what is non-negotiable for the CPI national secretary. "We want the state government to write to the Union government to withhold the MoU and to freeze it," he said.

Though outnumbered by the CPM, the CPI had often attempted to present itself as the authentic Left. When students Alan Shuhaib and Thwaha Fasal were slapped with Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) and naxalites were shot dead by Pinarayi Vijayan's police, the CPI had publicly expressed its disapproval.  

In 2017, when the CPI ministers first boycotted the Pinarayi Cabinet, it was to fight corruption, and to politically embarrass the CPM that seemed indifferent to the High Court's stern indictment of transport minister Thomas Chandy in a land encroachment case. The move was so consequential that Chandy had to resign. Pinarayi was so rattled that he called the CPI move "unprecedented". 

The CPM then sought to diminish the political significance of the CPI by roping in Kerala Congress (Mani) to its fold. The CPI's relevance to the LDF looked further jeopardised when the CPM began to woo the Muslim League in a big way. The threat of looming political insignificance pushed the CPI into survival mode.

After this, the CPI's concerns about a range of issues - custodial deaths and the Thrissur pooram fiasco for instance - were largely ignored by the Chief Minister. It was as if the CPI was non-existent.

Signing the PM SHRI MoU behind the CPI's back was just an extension of the CPM's domineering behaviour under Pinarayi Vijayan. But this was an insult the CPI is evidently unwilling to swallow.

The PM SHRI issue has also given the CPI yet another chance to emerge as the conscience of the Left. If the CPI could force the government to pull out of PM SHRI, which now looks unlikely, it could be its biggest ever political triumph after the split of 1964.

If the CPM once again swats aside its concerns, the CPI will have to do something drastic, more than the boycott of Cabinet, to retain not just its dignity but also its significance.