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From the ramparts of Delhi's 17th-century Red Fort, Modi vowed that his administration was on track to meet its pledge of providing power and toilets to every household across the world's second most populous nation.
Modi drew praise in his first August 15 speech in 2014 as he tackled often taboo issues such as sexual violence and a lack of toilets, promising to build one for every household within four years.
"Today I can say that in such short time, more than 20 million toilets have been built in India's villages and more than 70,000 are free of open defecation," Modi said to loud applause.
Open defecation has long been a major health and sanitation problem in India, where almost 594 million people—nearly half the population—defecate in the open, according to UNICEF.
Modi has stressed the need to clean up India since storming to power in 2014 and has repeatedly urged every household to have a toilet to end the spread of disease and illnesses such as diarrhea.
(Score: 3, Informative) by cubancigar11 on Wednesday August 17 2016, @03:17AM
Your understanding is based on, as I mentioned before, on very old ideas about Indian history. The why and how are extensively studied after 1980s and are part of oriental-occidental relationship.
Sanskrit bears close relationship with Classical Tamil + Vedic Sanskrit.
Vedit Sanskrit bears close relationship with Proto-Indo-Iranian.
Vedas talk about fight between good and evil, good being referred to as Arya(n) and evil as Raksha.
That is the only thing we know for sure. The racists of yesteryears were prone to take this and say - foreigners have always come to India and improved it and they imagined Aryan as an invading race of white skinned brown eyed superior race coming in India and decimating native Dravidian people and setting up better system - basically exactly what British were doing. This way they justified their rule, claiming that they were only continuing the good work that has always been done by foreigners in India.
Then Nazis ran with this theory claiming Aryans were THE pure blood and people with white skin and blue eyes are the superior race. As people married to scientific approach, Nazis didn't believe that an inferior race can be improved, but in fact mixing of race is dilution of superiority and undesirable. Rest is history.
Back to the point at hand - during Independence of India in 1947, Dravidian people (which meant people from southern part of India) were having all sort of political movements. One of these movements took this theory and started asking for Independence from rest of the India, claiming that Dravidian people have been ruled by Aryans for 4 thousand years. They didn't get much support except among people who speak Tamil, plus the British, due to whatever political reasons (won't go into either of that but it is very understandable).
The migration (and not invasion) of people speaking Proto-Indo-Iranian/Aryans happened way after Indus Valley civilization was gone. I think at least 1000 years of gap is present. But because of current political environment there are plenty of people who go around spreading this mis-information that Aryans were some sort of nomadic barbarians who ended Indus Valley civilization's well planned cities. The true reason behind the demise is the drying-up of the river along which it was set-up: Saraswati, which started flowing underground.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday August 17 2016, @05:18AM
Okay, see, THIS is what you do when someone is wrong about a factual matter :) I actually learned a few things, such as what *happened* to the river and the timescale involved. Modded up!
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...