Chacha Nehru, we learned in nursery school, was the ‘tallest leader’ in the country so how could we think of voting for anyone other than his party. It was an unhealthy situation that took decades to change and has not yet changed enough. We currently have a prime minister urging us to return to our days of demagogues and subservience by pronouncing during the Uttar Pradesh election that Rahul Gandhi was our ‘future’. And, the little ‘laat sahib’ modestly agreed. His family had broken up Pakistan, he declared proudly, and would have saved the Babri Masjid had we continued to allow India to be treated as their private estate.

So every time an incumbent government is thrown out I send up three cheers. But, the ousting of Mulayam Singh’s government last week pleased me particularly. Not because I have anything personal against him but because we cannot afford to have our largest, most populous state growing so slowly that it drags the country down. Mulayam Singh’s government, despite Amitabh Bachchan’s certificates of good character, did nothing to stop the state’s decline into lawlessness and chaos. Things are so bad now that it is this column’s considered opinion that Uttar Pradesh is the worst governed state in the country. In the reign of Mr and Mrs Lalu Yadav this honour went to Bihar, but while things have improved for Biharis there has been no sign of improvement in Uttar Pradesh.

The only people who have done well are the politicians. Amazingly well. They own vast properties, their children go to fine universities in foreign lands, their cars are bigger than the cars of businessmen (though mysteriously they never own them) and they rarely need to fly commercial any more. If someone counted how many private planes and helicopters were used in the Uttar Pradesh election, it could make an interesting document of economic change.

Nobody paid for them personally, you will hear, it was the party. To which we should ask, where are the parties are getting so much money from these days? Frankly, though, corruption is now endemic in the Indian body politic. It cannot be eradicated. The only solution is for us to teach our politicians to make money out of doing some good for the country instead of making it out of bad things like trying to turn the Taj Mahal into a shopping mall, as Mayawati tried to do when she was chief minister last time.

From all accounts she is now older and wiser and there is no point in spoiling her magnificent victory by dredging up bad memories, so in a spirit of goodwill I offer some humble suggestions on how Uttar Pradesh can be transformed within the next five years.

As the state that has the Taj Mahal and Varanasi, the new government should consider the economic possibilities of tourism. The potential is enormous if you consider that more foreign tourists visit the Taj than any other Indian monument, and Varanasi is increasingly the ancient Hindu city every visitor wants to see.

If millions of tourists are not already flocking to Uttar Pradesh, it is because the roads are bad, power supply unreliable, means of transport dodgy and municipal government so abysmal that beautiful, old Moghul single-trade towns like Ferozabad, Khurja and Kannauj today resemble garbage dumps.

Agra and Varanasi are not much better off where this is concerned, but private enterprise has stepped in and made a little difference. What private enterprise cannot do is build the heavy infrastructure or take charge of cleaning up the cities. This has to be something that government does. The benefits of using tourism as a vehicle of economic change is that the infrastructure the tourism industry needs is the exact infrastructure that ordinary people need—electricity, sanitary living conditions, roads and the rule of law.

Mayawati has proved that when it comes to social engineering and caste she is the most adept of all Uttar Pradesh politicians. She now has a chance to prove that on the economic front she can do more than build Ambedkar Parks. She inherits a state that is in a state of disrepair and will need the best help in the world to put it together again. Meanwhile, let’s raise a toast to incumbent governments continuing to bite the dust.