Tavleen Singh writes: Double-engine, double trouble

As citizens of this ‘mother of democracy’, we have a right to demand accountability from those who are supposed to be servants of us, ‘the people.’

6 min readJun 28, 2026 06:16 AM IST

First published on: Jun 28, 2026 at 06:15 AM IST

There could not be a more perfect week to talk about corruption. Speaking for myself, I admit that my head has been reeling because of the number of times I have lately heard the word corruption uttered. From the ‘cockroaches’ protesting in Jantar Mantar to the dirty linen tumbling out of the temple in Ayodhya to the ‘double-engine’ chief minister caught in nepotistic land deals in Ujjain, corruption has become hard to ignore. On the day that this column’s deadline looms, I make it a point to go to the gym and spend at least an hour on the treadmill watching the news. It helps me examine my thoughts and follow the latest events.

This time, as I was gloomily brooding over the way in which corruption has suddenly exploded onto the national political landscape, the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh popped up on my screen. It stunned me to hear him smilingly declare that it was because of the ‘double-engine’ government in Uttar Pradesh that the state has become number one. It has not. But, instead of being a basket case, the state Yogi Adityanath has governed with an iron hand (and many bulldozers) for nearly a decade has improved in some ways.

What struck me about Yogi’s speech was that reference to his ‘double-engine’ government, because it is from these supposedly idyllic states that the biggest corruption stories are coming. The Ram temple in Ayodhya has been built under the direct supervision of Bulldozer Baba, so it is extraordinary that he never got a hint of gold, silver, expensive jewellery and cash being looted from the offerings that devotees made in good faith. It is just as extraordinary that the trustees of the temple’s funds did not notice what was going on. They must explain why they disregarded advice, given long ago, to have the temple’s offerings counted professionally. What we are beginning to see in all the cases that have surfaced is a criminal lack of accountability.

Last week, yet another young Indian committed suicide because he could not face another NEET examination. This adds to the grim count of around a hundred students committing suicide over NEET in the past five years, with the highest toll last year. The Cockroach Janata Party is right to demand that the education minister resign since he is directly responsible for the mess in the examination system. It is the demand for Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation that made them spend all last week in protest in Jantar Mantar. But, judging by the effusive birthday greetings the Prime Minister posted on Friday, there seems little chance of his resignation.

As citizens of this ‘mother of democracy’, we have a right to demand accountability from those who are supposed to be servants of us, ‘the people.’ But somehow, the man who calls himself the Pradhan Sewak (prime servant) has not noted how much his fair image is being damaged by the reckless absence of accountability that his ministers and chief ministers are showing. Does he know that corruption is now so publicly displayed that in Mumbai, when the Vidhan Sabha is in session, ministers stay in the Oberoi Hotel? Who pays for this and why? And who pays for the Range Rovers, Land Cruisers and BMWs that remain parked in the hotel’s porch all day? Maharashtra, in case you may have forgotten, is another double-engine government.

Corrupt politicians are now so plentiful that people have stopped expecting that Modi will live up to that promise he made long ago. ‘Na khaunga, na khaane doonga’. Loosely translated, because in English eating is the wrong word, what he said was that he would not be lining his own pockets, nor would he allow anyone else to line theirs. Corruption was one of the reasons why the Congress Party lost that Lok Sabha election twelve years ago, so this promise was electorally powerful.

What then has gone wrong? Why do BJP spokespersons when asked about some new tale of corruption respond cynically that the Congress era was much worse and that if the Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh should honourably offer his resignation, then so should the Chief Minister of Karnataka, whose wealth is as mysterious. The truth is that there is no easier way to become very rich very quickly than to find a way of entering politics. The reason why so many big political leaders cling to power in their dotage and ensure that their children get into politics as well is because there is so much easy money to be made.

This is not something that has happened only since Hindutva leaders took charge, it has always been this way, but when Modi became prime minister for the first time, there was hope that he would change this very ugly political culture. It is one of his more glaring failures that he has been unable to do this and that the media has become too docile to do the kind of investigative story that appeared in this newspaper last week on the shady land dealings in Ujjain. It was excellent journalism after a very long time, and it made me proud to have a column in The Indian Express for nearly forty years now. It is true that we in the media have not been doing our job well and it saddens me to admit that I cannot go into reasons why.