The political class needs to step back and realise that the “mass movements” they launch over everything are not mass movements at all.

They are intended as carefully coordinated political campaigns; but, given that they are supposedly “people-driven”, they are prone to capture by extremists, and they all-too-easily explode out of the original initiator’s control. The BJP, which threatened a nationwide agitation over Amarnath and the Ram Setu, should remember this.

Orissa’s and Karnataka’s recent law-and-order troubles stand as testament to the human and political cost when such agitations are launched, and then are lost control of. Big political decisions are meant to be made politically, rationally, through negotiation and taking the long view — not through the last resort against an undemocratic state, civil agitation. India’s political class must learn from Banerjee how not to behave.