Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi campaigning in Kerala, March 11, 2026 -- Prime Minister's Office (GODL-India), GODL-India, via Wikimedia Commons By Vijay Prashad In India, over 123 million people voted in the four states of Assam, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and West Bengal (home to 290 million people) for their state assemblies. These are influential states: two in the south, one in the east, and one in the northeast. The next national parliamentary election is not scheduled unt

Pinarayi Vijayan campaigns on April 8 -- image via the CPI(M) on Facebook The 2026 Kerala election results indicate a serious setback for the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Democratic Front (LDF), which has been in power for the past decade. Early trends and vote counting showed some LDF ministers trailing and the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) is leading in over 100 of the 140 Assembly seats. While Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan managed to retain hi

Pinarayi Vijayan speaks at an LDF rally in Kerala in January, 2026 -- image via Facebook By Nabil Abdul Majeed and Nitheesh Narayanan In 1945, two years prior to India’s independence, the current Chief Minister of Kerala, Pinarayi Vijayan, was born into a working-class family in northern Kerala. He was his mother’s fourteenth child; of the thirteen siblings born before him, only two survived. His mother was an agricultural labourer and his father a toddy tapper. They belonged

The Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Democratic Alliance (LDF) government achieves a unique feat in India which, according to the World Bank, has the world’s largest number of extremely poor. Housing built as part of the poverty eradication program -- video screenshot image via the CPI(M) on Facebook By Abdul Rahman, People's Dispatch On Saturday, November 1, India’s southern state of Kerala officially declared itself free of extreme poverty. This makes the left-ru