Small Indian Village called Maroda is placed in the northern, mostly agricultural state of Haryana, just 44 miles north of the Indian capital New Delhi. Although the settlement has barely any electricity or running water, this fact hasn't stopped the village officials to take the initiative for the change of its name. They are doing all they can to change the name of the settlement to Trump Village with lots of help from Sulabh International, a social service organization that has been providing toilets to the poor Indian villages for years.
What's the meaning of this name change?
This name change was meant to honor Prime Minister Narendra Modi's first visit to the White House and his meeting with Trump, which is set to take place in just a few days, on June 26th.
Although not many of the 400 inhabitants of Maroda know who Donald Trump actually is, they are very happy that their village heads are making this decision because that also means that they will have toilets placed in every single one of their mud-brick houses.
The renaming ceremony
Ignoring the fact that this decision has not been made official by the Indian government, the renaming ceremony was held on Friday.The village elders placed a huge billboard that stated "Welcome to Trump Village" in both English and Hindi.
This was followed by a large number of posters of Trump scattered all across the village and placed on each of the houses. Although already impressive because of their size, these posters were also made even more so with the marigold flowers arrangements.
The real reason behind the ceremony
Weird, wacky, wow! Watch this video of the Indian village that has christened itself Trump Sulabh Village. https://t.co/77bwQmX3kI
— New Indian Express (@NewIndianXpress) June 24, 2017
According to the founder of Sulabh International charity group, Bindeshwar Pathak, the renaming of the settlement from Maroda to Trump Village is not just for the sake of honoring the American president Donald Trump and the upcoming trip to White House of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, but to actually draw some attention and get the investors to fund their efforts to improve sanitations of villages all across India.
This comes as no surprise as there are very few toilets in this village. Not only that but there is more than 60 percent of India's 1.3 billion population that don't have toilets and are forced to defecate in the open resulting in dysentery killing hundreds of millions of children each year.
So the Maroda renaming ceremony is after all about raising all the awareness to this emerging and rather alarming problem.
