The BJP is dreaming of replicating the Tripura triumph in Kerala, where the communist party is still in power, at the next assembly election. Pic/PTI

Does the Marxist government's decimation in Tripura mean that communism in India is dead? Though it is still in power in Kerala, it appears to be comatose in Bengal. On the other hand, one of the world's most powerful man, China's President Xi Jinping, is a communist; and he just had his country's constitution modified to remain in power beyond his second term. (Okay, I'll grant that the Chin's communism is more an agnostic realpolitik veering towards imperialism, rather than a paradise of workers owning the mode of production.) Greece elected socialists following the global economic slowdown. A large swathe of India is dominated by Naxals, who preach Mao's brand of communism. Bihar has its stubborn handful of communists; even Kashmir has its Marxist Yusuf Tarigami. An ideology might go out of fashion or find it tough against caste ideologies, but it can never die.