7 yrs of Good Governance Day: Christmas under Modi will never be uneventful

Anyone remember Good Governance Day? It falls today, the seventh since Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in the first year of India's first Hindu majoritarian regime, hit on the idea of replacing this Christian festival with an anniversary to commemorate the late Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s birth anniversary. That was a dismaying announcement mainly for senior government servants. The festive season holiday was made a working day for them with a slate of suggestions from the Prime Minister’s Office on what bureaucrats could do to celebrate Vajpayee’s 90th birthday (visit sanitation projects, for example). There was a frisson of unrest when it was suggested that schools should also be opened to observe birthday celebrations (for the former PM, not the