The same complaint can be voiced about West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee who, in her palpable eagerness to play a larger role in national affairs, has been adopting postures which do not show her up as a sober and responsible politician.

Instead, her shrill denunciation of opponents, and a querulous approach – much like her present-day ally, Arvind Kejriwal – mark her out as someone with a blinkered outlook who cannot be taken seriously.

Her attempt to cobble together an opposition alliance against demonetisation is the third occasion in recent years when she has tried to make her presence felt at the national level.

Considering her earlier failures, however, the chances of her leading a credible charge at the head of a motley combination against the Narendra Modi government are minimal.

The rickety nature of her alliance is evident from the fact that the chief ministers of Bihar and Odisha, Nitish Kumar and Naveen Patnaik, have stayed away and even Laloo Prasad Yadav changed his mind at the last minute about participating in her rally in Patna.

Mamata Banerjee was also rebuffed by the CPI(M) although she had tried to enlist the support of her otherwise inveterate political enemy at least on the limited issue of demonetisation.

But, as the Left Front chairman in West Bengal, Biman Bose, has conceded, the bandh called by the comrades failed to evoke any popular response because the people “still believe that Modi’s decision of demonetisation will help unearth black money”.

Amidst this disarray in the opposition ranks, the few who still remain with her include the Samajwadi Party although it had ditched her at the time of Pranab Mukherjee’s election as the President in June, 2012, after initially promising to support Mamata Banerjee’s efforts to field another candidate such as either A.P.J. Abdul Kalam or Somnath Chatterjee.

Similarly, Anna Hazare had backed off from a public meeting in the national capital in March, 2014, which intended to launch Mamata Banerjee as a pan-Indian leader on the eve of the general election in that year.

Whatever chances she had this time of being a rallying figure have taken a hit because of the controversy over the army’s presence at various checkpoints in West Bengal on what has been described as a routine exercise.

Yet, the chief minister described it as a coup and a conspiracy, thereby showing a tendency to fly off the handle over a perceived provocation.

While her desire to empathize with the common man in his distress because of the cash crunch is understandable, a major mistake on her part has been to take the extreme position of a roll-back of the measure announced by the Modi government on November 8.

The other parties are unwilling to go along with her on this score if only because they realize, first, that such a retreat by the centre is not possible; and, secondly, because of the vague realization that there is a large measure of support for the measure among the ordinary people despite their current inconvenience.

But if they are still willing to stand for hours in long queues, it is because of their conviction that for the first time, a serious attempt is being made by the government to tackle the problem of black money – something which no other previous regime had done.

It is the quiet acceptance of the government’s bona fides which has made Mamata Banerjee’s allies call for alternatives to a roll-back like setting up a joint parliamentary committee to probe the “monumental mismanagement” of the demonetisation process, in former prime minister Manmohan Singh’s words, rather than its outright scrapping.

It is clear enough that notwithstanding the government’s colossal blunder in failing to assess the impact of what Amartya Sen has called a despotic action, the average individual does not see the shortage of cash as a systemic failure as in the immediate post-1947 years when there used to be a run on “failed” banks.

The belief among a section of the economists, including Sen, that demonetisation will erode trust in the system because of the government’s inability to honour the promissory notes is fallacious.

Mamata Banerjee has taken on an issue, therefore, while turning a blind eye to its wider implications, especially in the matter of decimating the parallel economy.

Accustomed as she is to pursuing a populist line with a focus on the immediate future, such as by opposing fuel price hikes without looking at the economic reasons, she has chosen to exploit the difficulties of the people standing in queues before banks and ATMs to start an agitation.

In doing so, she may have displayed her honesty and simplicity, as one of her admirers, Baba Ramdev, has said. But, while honesty is a virtue, simplicity, which can denote the lack of sophistication and incomprehension of complex issues, can be a disadvantage. (IPA Service)