Yechury And Fujimori: The Futile And The Efficacious

Reactions To Deaths Of Sitaram Yechury & Alberto Fujimori

Dear Reader,

This week witnessed the deaths of two political figures — Sitaram Yechury and Alberto Fujimori — on two different sides of the planet, India and Peru respectively. In politics, legacies are made, broken, remembered, and sometimes manufactured in strikingly different ways.

Hagiographic obituaries for Yechury, the CPI-M leader, are being written by Communists (including the closet ones). The usual Nehruvian ecosystem is grieving for due to his loyalty to the Congress.

But for a dispassionate and objective observer, his political journey is a story of decline, with his party’s influence waning under his leadership — on all parameters.

For India, he did little. And that is, if we discount the damage he and his communists have caused to India (remember the US-India Civil Nuclear deal or political violence in Bengal?). This is where the futility of exaggerated obituaries flashes through.

Contrast this with the legacy of Peruvian leader Alberto Fujimori, who transformed Peru into a thriving economy while crushing violent communist insurgencies. He is being celebrated by Peruvians as a saviour of the country. The efficacy of this celebration comes through as genuine and well-deserved.

Prasenjit K Basu, in his article 'Yechury And Fujimori: The Futile And The Efficacious' talks about this in detail. He says that "a politician’s legacy is defined by his impact on the people, while a bureaucrat’s is shaped by his service to the organisation".

Read his incisive piece in full here.

- Anmol N Jain