A common joke used to make the rounds in Kolkata, where I grew up and found my footing in journalism. The joke was that West Bengal, whose capital city is Kolkata, was more Marxist than China — this in the heyday of communism. While China retained its Marxist model of governance, it was shrewd enough to open its market along capitalist lines.
On the other hand, West Bengal, the eastern Indian state, stubbornly refused to industrialize, scaring away potential investors, both from home and abroad.
The story of the southwestern state of Kerala has not been very different either. In 1957, it voted communists into power, the first parliamentary state (apart from San Marino) anywhere in the world to have taken this extraordinarily bold step in a global scenario where the Reds were treated like outcasts and viewed with deep suspicion.