Jiyo Parsi

It is a central sector scheme launched in September 2013 with the aim to arrest decline in population of Parsi’s and reverse the trend (Total population of Parsi’s in 1991 was 114000 which reduced to 57000 in 2011).

3 Components of the Scheme

1. Advocacy: It includes counseling of couples with infertility, marriage, family and elderly counseling; help desks and medical camps all over India, development of website to capture population and other details of Parsi community and outreach programme.
2. Health of the Community: This covers crèche/ childcare support, senior citizen honorarium for childcare, assistance to elderly, etc.
3. Medical Assistance: Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART) which includes In-Vitro Fertilization (IVF) and Intra Cytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI) and other modes including surrogacy as medical assistance are provided.

Few measures apart from above to arrest population decline would be to persuade community members to consider allowing inter-religion marriages into the community fold and encouraging liberal family planning policies.