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Toilet charity’s plan for Trump-named village goes down the pan
A toilet-building charity’s effort to rename an Indian village after US President Donald Trump has been blocked. District officials who oversee Maroda village said the renaming effort was a fundraising stunt for the charity. But residents of the village in Haryana state worried they would not get free toilets if they abandoned the new name “Trump Sulabh Village”, the charity said.
What next? None of the funding is coming from Trump or the US, but Sulabh International founder Bindeshwar Pathak said he hoped the renaming attempt would bring attention to their efforts to improve sanitation across India, where about 60 per cent of the 1.25 billion population defecates in the open. “The real issue is that the area had already been declared open-defecation free,” though a survey by the charity found only 40 of the village’s 160 homes had toilets, Pathak said. “When we brought attention to the lack of toilets, they asked us to remove the signs” declaring its new name as Trump Sulabh Village. Most villagers who attended a renaming ceremony said they did not know who Trump was, but were happy to take his name if it meant a free toilet.
