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Kunwar Bai Yadav has become famous in and around her village for building a toilet in her home
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On Tuesday, Dhamtari became the
first district in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh to be
declared free from open defecation. And the credit for that is being
given to Kunwar Bai Yadav, a woman who claims to be 105, and sold her
only assets a few goats to build a toilet at home.
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The toilet cost Mrs Yadav 22,000 rupees ($330; £271)
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The BBC's Geeta
Pandey visits her home to hear her inspiring story. A mere 100km
(60 miles) from Raipur, the capital of Chhattisgarh, is Kotabharri
village where 18 families, displaced by a dam on the Mahanadi river,
were settled in the late 1970s.
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Earlier this year, Mrs Yadav was felicitated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi
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The small non-descript village
seems to be an unlikely setting for a revolution and its oldest
resident, Kunwar Bai Yadav, seems like an unlikely revolutionary. But
in the past year, Mrs Yadav has put her name - and that of her village -
in bold letters on the state's journey towards becoming free from open
defecation.