Keerthi Prakasam | The News Minute | 5:58 PM IST Elections are over, the winners and losers have been proclaimed. Even as the winners get busy with governing the nation, the losers are in an 'introspection' mode. As the new government swung into its turbo action mode, a bystander who once mattered in the Indian political landscape, and now reduced to a shadow of its former self is found weeping in the corridor. But the weep has no rhythm of introspection, it is just filled with bitterness and blindness to see the new political reality.The bystander/ intellect/rebel and the critic all rolled into one is the Indian Left. The ideologies of the Left continue to lead and inspire many among us, but not many would ever swear by the Indian Left anymore.On Sunday, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) apologetically approved a review of the party’s performance in the last Lok Sabha elections, reports say.In the report the party takes collective responsibility for its failure, and hence there shall be no resignations and any such drama. There are some Left leaders who wanted to step down, but the party it seems doesn't believe in resignations. But the fact remains that if a leader like Karat, Yechury or even M A Baby resigns, there will simply be a void. For a party that nurtured its student leaders, the Left is left with no new faces or leaders. The Left has been improvising on their intellectual space in the last few years, but that has done zero good to their political side.The report owns up its defeat in Kerala yet again and that in Bengal this time. If you think this is a first, then you should know that in 2009 also a similar review report came out with the party taking collective responsibility for its failure.What seemed like an avoidable farce in Kerala for the left were ego clashes that led way to the estrangement of one its allies, the Revolutionary Socialist Party. The Left in the state was plainly being irrational when they decided to field MA Baby in Kollam, an RSP stronghold. The casualty was immediate, RSP joined the ruling United Democratic Front. Even while they were jilted, the state leadership’s arrogant stand against what they perceived to be a small loss caused them a shameful defeat, especially so when a veteran like Baby was defeated in Kollam. In Bengal, the BJP 's vote share rose by more than three times. It is not just in Bengal that the Left's inability to lead allowed the BJP to gain, even in Thiruvananthapuram, they fielded a nobody like Bennett Abraham to win over the church, but eventually lost pathetically. They also helped the BJP in gaining votes. The alert remained oblivious even as it was evident to the rest of the world that these were big mistakes and wrong political decisions.Once again the party has prepared a “sorry†report. It says sorry because the leadership failed to measure the progress that was being made by “religious†sections, and then it again takes collective responsibility. Yet again, the party seems to be forgetting that it desperately needs to reinvent itself rather than forever engaging in debates that the common man is barely able to understand