The take that the CPI(M) lost in 2009/2011 because they were out-of-touch upper caste and/or Bhadralok elites doesn't quite match up to what happened during the time.

Much of what transpired was a result of what happened in rural/suburban Bengal, & it hardly concerned Bhadraloks

It's a weird Cambridge School-ish take; the thing was that where you saw marginal peasants striking back at the middle peasantry who formed the backbone of the CPI(M)'s infamous harmad bahini(literally 'Armada') and village leadership, the middle peasants weren't UC and in many

cases from the same castes as the marginal peasantry.

People tend to overestimate the importance of Calcutta in determining who wins or loses elections in Bengal. The Left didn't come to power on the back of winning Calcutta, neither did the TMC and neither is the BJP's rise

about Calcutta either.

Wrt caste, the thing was that non-UC CPI(M) leaders in Bengal would strongly downplay their own caste identities, but it doesn't mean the CPI(M) was a party of merely UC Bhadralok refugees. And just looking at the two CMs is very superficial.

Unlike in Bombay, Bengal's Communist movements were largely agrarian and well, considering how landlords tended to be disproportionately upper caste(but not exclusively so) and the peasantry being almost entirely LC/tribal, the 'caste character' of these movements weren't Savarna