NEW DELHI: India's Parsis have now decided that if they so wish they can be buried instead of choosing the traditional practice of 'dokhmenishini', or disposal of a body through exposure to scavenging birds.What's the reason for this break from the 3000-year-old Zoroastrian tradition? A declining vulture population.In the past 15 years, India's vulture population has declined by a whopping 99 per cent, according to a survey conducted by the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) in 2016. What makes this a problem is that a corpses that vultures usually took around 30 minutes to scavenge now lies rotten spreading a foul stench."There are currently about 1,00,000 vultures left in India, compared with 40 million of them in the 1980s," the survey said.Vultures may not make good pets, but they are an important part of the food chain. They feed on carcasses, preventing the spread of deadly bacteria and fungus into the ground and water.With a dip in the population of scavenging birds, the Towers of Silence in Mumbai and two such places in Hyderabad - where Parsis would lay their dead - tried alternative solar concentrators to accelerate the rate of decomposition. Even so, this alternative isn't ideal either, becaue the solar concentrator desiccates the dead body, not in a half-hour that a hungry flock of vultures did - but in days and even weeks, especially in the relatively cooler season ."Earlier a body was kept at Dokha for vultures to eat it. In the absence of vultures, we were disposing of the bodies using solar energy and heat. It takes a lot of time to dispose of a body and hence community members wanted us to adopt burial as another mode," said Kersi Deboo, a committee member of Navsari Samast Parsi Zoroastrian Anjuman.Last year, a senior Parsi priest was buried as per his last wishes. This sparked discussions in the community on the sensitive issue. The octogenarian priest, Homi Kotwal , before his death, described the traditional method as a "failed system", after he closely observed how the bodies were rotting at the Tower of Silence.In 2006, an elderly Parsi woman shared photographs of bodies rotting inside the Tower of Silence, which triggered a fierce debate on last rites. But the Bombay Parsi Punchayet insisted that there were no problems with the age-old method and installed solar panels to speed up the decomposition process. However, the panels were of no use during monsoon and winter spells.After years of debate over the issue, Parsis in Gujarat can now choose burial after death instead of 'dokhmenishini'. But the traditional practice for disposal of a body will also continue at two Dokhmas in Dungarwadi of Viraval in Gujarat. Aramgah, which refers to the 'last resting place', will be developed around the Dokhmas.