Good Governance Day -2022

About Good Governance Day-

• In 2014, the then newly-elected Narendra Modi government announced that December 25 would be celebrated as “Good Governance Day.” 
• Marking the birth anniversary of former Prime Minister and Bharatiya Janata Party doyen Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the day is meant to foster awareness among citizens about government accountability and administration.
• The day is celebrated to ensure that the country’s residents are treated fairly by the government and they receive advantages of various government services.
• A major push, in this regard, was to promote “e-Governance” with the official slogan for the event being “Good Governance through e-Governance.”
• In 2019, the government launched the Good Governance Index on this occasion. 
• The GGI is a scientifically prepared tool based on various parameters of good governance which assess the level of any state at a given point of time and help in shaping future development.

A brief note on Atal Bihari Vajpayee-

• Atal Bihari Vajpayee was born on December 25, 1924 in Gwalior, present-day Madhya Pradesh. 
• A poet-politician, he joined the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in 1939, becoming a pracharak (full-time worker) in 1947. 
• Due to his literary prowess, he began working under Sangh Parivar head Deen Dayal Upadhyaya on various publications.
• After Upadhyaya’s passing, in 1968, he became the national president of the Jana Sangh, RSS’s new political outfit. 
• He was the most eloquent speaker that the Hindu right had at that time and soon proved himself to be a capable administrator as well. 
• He held his first major national position as the External Affairs Minister in Morarji’s post Emergency government in 1975. 
• While that government soon fell (in 1977), Vajpayee had earned major plaudits for his tenure, with his UN General Assembly speech in Hindi drawing praise from all quarters.
• In 1980, erstwhile members of the Jana Sangh coalesced to form the BJP with Vajpayee as its leader. 
• While the party initially struggled for electoral success, by the 1990s, religious polarisation orchestrated by the party and other Hindu outfits started making electoral inroads for the BJP.
• While he first became Prime Minister in 1996 (for 16 days) it was his 1998-1999 and 1999-2004 terms that left a lasting impact on the nation.
• Vajpayee expertly toed a line between hardline Hindutva and moderate Hindu nationalism while governing efficiently. 
• Under his tenure, India formally became a nuclear power despite significant criticism from the West, ably faced war and peace with Pakistan, undertook massive public welfare projects including Sarva Shikshya Abhiyaan and PM Gramin Sadak Yojana, and ushered in a new era of foreign investment and international relations, especially with the US.