Govt to fund infertility treatment of Parsis
Aditi Tandon/TNS
Aditi Tandon/TNS
New Delhi, September 9
On a demographic decline, the Parsis are all set to get government help in improving their dwindling numbers and fertility.
On a demographic decline, the Parsis are all set to get government help in improving their dwindling numbers and fertility.
The Planning Commission has approved a novel, first-of-its-kind scheme, which the Minority Affairs Ministry had mooted to fund the cost of infertility treatment in Parsi couples. The 100 per cent centrally funded scheme is rooted in the realisation that appallingly low levels of marriage, fertility and childbirth are the main reasons for the plummeting population of Parsis, one of the five minorities under the central National Minority Commission Act.
The community has a shockingly low Total Fertility Rate (the number of children a woman bears in her life) of 0.89 as against India’s average of 2.5. Their numbers fell from 1.14 lakh in 1941 to 69,601 in 2001 and further to 60,000 in 2011. Costing Rs 20 crore, the scheme would be part of the 12th Plan once the National Development Council approves the full plan. It has been cleared by the Planning Commission steering group headed by Syeda Hameed and included in the draft plan.
“The scheme will enable the government to fund fertility clinics in Parsi-dominated areas,” Chairman, National Commission for Minorities (NCM), Wajahat Habibullah told The Tribune today.
It envisages financial aid for detection of infertility in childless couples, infertility counselling and screening of female children for detection of diseases that result in infertility and would also support fertility clinics being run by Parsis. Bombay Parsi Panchayat runs one such clinic which offers facilities of blood testing, trans-vaginal sonography, laproscopy/hysterectomy and semen analysis to Parsi couples leading to an infertility treatment plan.
Noted Parsi poet and NCM member Keki Daruwalla firmly pushed the scheme in an April 25 letter to Hameed which he wrote amid criticism that the government can’t possibly fund infertility treatment of a minority.
“Parsis, despite being a minority, avail none of the benefits that accrue to other minority communities,” Daruwalla said.
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