A one day seminar under the auspices of the National Commission for Minorities highlights the community's demographic decline and the steps to counter the falling numbers
Arnavaz S.Mama
"To do nothing is to do something wrong.” Dr Ashish Bose, population studies expert and chairman of the Society for Applied Research in the Humanities, quoted a German aphorism. "We’ve taken 50 years doing nothing,” added Dr Armaity Desai, former director of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS).
The strong statements of the sociologists were made in the context of the Parsi community’s depleting numbers as demonstrated by the Government of India census 2001 which has pegged the all-India community membership at 69,601. In the face of a globally low fertility profile (0.9 percent), of the world’s highest geriatric population......