DWINDLING NUMBERS

♦ Be responsible. Don’t use a condom tonight.♦ Isn’t it time you broke up with your mom?♦ Will your boyfriend ever be as successful as Ratan Tata? Who are you to judge, Nicole Kidman?From making fun of the unmarried Parsi men in their 40s, who are still living with their mothers, to taking a dig at choosy women in the community who want extremely well-to-do husbands, the Parsis have gone all out to laugh at themselves and make a point- ‘make more babies’.On Monday, the community launched a first-of-its-kind advertisement campaign to tackle the issue of their dwindling population. Ad veteran Sam Balsara and his team at Madison, known to have worked on several campaigns for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, have designed the campaign to urge Parsis to make more babies. The campaign also urges couples to get medical help under the Jiyo Parsi scheme that funds infertility treatment for couples.“We wanted to appeal to young couples without the ads looking like sermons. What would be a better way than making fun of ourselves,” said Lara Balsara, executive director at Madison World. More than 15 quirky print advertisements will make way in the Parsi press and the digital media in the next fortnight and the campaign will be led by actors Perizad Zorabian and Boman Irani.“We have used real Parsi people depicting their real relationships in the ads,” said Balsara. One such print ad is of a couple who recently delivered a baby girl after their infertility treatment was funded under the ministry of minority affairs scheme- Jiyo Parsi- which was announced in September last year. The woman, Persis Kamakhan (35), and her husband Asti had the baby after 11 years of marriage.With a funding of Rs 10 crore, Parsi couples having trouble conceiving can undergo in-vitro Fertilisation (IVF), artificial insemination (AI) and other infertility treatments and get the money reimbursed under the scheme.The attempt at being witty, however, did not go down well with all the community members. A young woman felt that an ad depicting a woman looking at a Parsi Colony renamed as ‘Hindu Colony’ which stated “if you don’t get married and have kids, this area will have a new name in your lifetime” was offensive. Sam Balsara, however, promptly addressed her concern saying he will not run the ad if it appeared offensive.The Jiyo Parsi team is hopeful to add at least 200 more Parsi babies to boost the population. While a pair of twins and a baby girl have already arrived, about a dozen babies are due in the coming weeks. “We are positive the campaign will bring about a difference and reach out to the young,” said Shernaz Cama, member of the executive council of Parzor, a project to preserve Parsi Zoroastrian heritage that is working on the campaign with Madison.The city’s Parsi population is estimated to be 40,000. The community also has an extremely worrisome birth and death ratio, with merely 200 births annually as compared 800 deaths. The declining numbers have been attributed mainly to late marriages, several choosing to remain single, couples deciding to have only one child, infertility issues and marriages outside the community.