The Economic Times: 30 Jan, 2011, Nupur Amarnath,ET Bureau
Parsis, Jews, Syrian Christians, Bohra Muslims
Professor George Menachery, Dr. K. C. Zachariah, Sayeed Unisa, Yazdi Tantra, Pronoti Chirmuley, Pheroza J Godrej speak to ET.
Businesses held by diminishing races in a crisis to stay afloat
Ratan Tata is used to being feted. So when
shareholders showered effusive eulogies in the mid-August annual
general meeting, the managing director of the country's largest
conglomerate hardly batted an eyelid. Basking in the assorted
praise where people implored, "Don't leave us" or "We cannot
lose our Ratan," Tata said he will step down by December 2012.
After that, if he stays on in an advisory role is another issue.
The real issue is that the organisation that JRD Tata helped
build in the early 20th century and Ratan Tata helped chisel may
have to make its peace with the fact that its next in line
successor may not be a Parsi. There is speculation that, given
the group's increasing global focus, the choice need not be an
Indian. Tata himself has clarified that the new chief need not
be either a Parsi or even a Tata. The
Parsis are a wealthy business community in India. And the
community is shrinking.
Professor Sayeed Unisa in the department of mathematical
demography and statistics at the International Institute for
Population Sciences (IIPS) in Mumbai says that the population of
Parsi community was 111,791 in 1951; it declined to 69,601 in
2001. Projected population based on estimated births and deaths
shows that the community's population will shrink to 40,000 by
2041. "The community has one of the lowest fertility (0.99 in
1999) in the world. This is because of very high non-marriage
and late marriage," he says.
The Parsis' isn't a unique case.
Businesses held by diminishing races all over the world are
in a crisis of sorts to manage to stay afloat. The
Greek-Australian community in Greece is dealing with issues
where the second and third generation does not want to be
involved with community organisations. Religion doesn't bind
them and the culture is alien to them.
Enter organisations like the World Zoroastrian Chamber of
Commerce (WZCC). Yazdi Tantra, the technical director of the
WZCC says that while bigger corporations like Tatas and Godrejs
are secure as they have a brand image, smaller businesses and
home-base operations face a threat as the younger generation may
or may not want to carry on the enterprise.
Tantra, along with WZCC members and some eminent Parsi
industrialists, is trying to rekindle the flame of
entrepreneurship among the Parsi youth. In 2009, WZCC launched a
business plan contest, inviting Parsi youth to come up with
business ideas that the community will help to promote and
develop. "Since then, we have introduced many hand-holding
schemes to encourage Parsi youth to rediscover their spirit of
entrepreneurship. This year we have launched an entrepreneur
development programme to promote the same," Tantra says. "Today
the attitudes have changed. Earlier the Parsis were the pioneers
in entrepreneurship, but maybe the license raj or fighting the
government for privileges changed that," notes research scholar
Pronoti Chirmuley at Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University, who
has been researching on the Parsis for the last three years.
To involve the young, the Parsi community has initiated
programmes to strengthen and revive traditional practices by
teaching the younger generation the required skills. "Parsi
embroidery-gara and cor-is a unique traditional craft. This
skill is being promoted by UNESCO-assisted PARZOR, a non-profit
research organisation projecting vulnerable heritage," Pheroza J
Godrej, an Bohra Muslims eminent Parsi who has also co-authored
A ZoroastrianTapestry:Art,ReligionandCulture.
The dwindling numbers is not affecting the Parsis alone. There
are many pure races in India that are getting battle ready to
save their numbers. The Syrian
Christians and
Jews of Kerala and the of Gujarat are cases in point. In
Kerala, first the Syrian Christians and then the Jews rose to
high ranks of society through excellence in business. But their
numbers too have been dwindling over the years, impacting the
businesses they built. According to former senior demographer
for the World Bank and honorary professor at the Centre for
Development Studies Dr KC Zachariah, in 2009 the Kerala
population was 32.5 million while the Syrian Orthodox were
accounted at 6,94,000 only and Jacobites (another sect of
SyrianChristians)was6,05,000.
Historian and anthropologist Professor George Menachery, an
expert in the history of Kerala, says that in Kerala, the
figures for Christians have dwindled from around 25 percent in
say 1970 to 19 percent today. "There are only 52 Jews left in
Kerala although there are half a dozen synagogues and cemeteries
left in the State," he says. The orthodox Christian and Jewish
communities in the country are not a homogenous group and even
in the Syrian Christians there are many denominations. Prof
Menachery adds that except for the Knanaya community of central
Kerala the other Syrian Christians are more or less of the same
stock, although inter-cultural and inter-religious marriages are
on the rise. While Parsis are mainly concentrated in Maharashtra
and some pockets of Gujarat, Jews and Orthodox Christians are
primarilysituatedinKerala.
Prof Menachary claims that businesses that flourished because of
the numbers in a family are the ones being increasingly
affected. But Dr Zachariah says that while dwindling numbers of
the Syrian Christians doesn't affect business to a large extent
but it does affect their representation to get any aid from the
state, or to get noticed as community.
But clout is not restricted to numbers, says Zafar Sareshwala,
chief executive officer of Gujarat-based Parsoli Corp Ltd, who
hails from the minority community of Sunni Bohris. Having worked
and travelled extensively to the UK and US since 1995,
Sareshwala has noticed how the Jews in these countries, despite
being a minority, have extended their sphere of influence. "In
an increasingly globalising world, education-both men and
women-not community will be the key differentiator," he says.
Sareshwala, who runs a vocational guidance centre in Ahmedabad
for the Class XII passouts to guide them for further studies
started it as a service for Muslim youth but now entertains
interests from other communities as well. Dawoodi and Sunni
Bohras are an adventurous and enterprising community because of
education, he believes. "India has a population of 1.75 million
Muslims in all but they have no influence. To be counted, they
have to build their sphere of influence which can only come
through education," he says.
Emigrations are cited as the leading cause for the dwindling
numbers especially among the Jews in Kerala, where a sizeable
chunk emigrated to Israel in 1962-70, says Aviv Divekar who runs
Aftech Informatics in Gujarat and is a fifth generation Jew
residing in India. Among the 40 families left in Gujarat,
Divekar feels business has moved from the sense of community.
"Jews came to India primarily as a trading community but as time
passed most of them have taken to the service sector," he says
but refrains from calling it an attitudinal shift.
Some communities are responding to the threat by fighting back.
Godrej specifies that the Bombay Parsi Panchayat has initiated a
number of innovative programmes to curtail the trend. "There are
holiday programme for youth called Zoroastrian Youth for the
Next Generation (ZYNG), career guidance programme and a central
employment bureau," she says. The Panchayat has also got a
matrimonial bureau, subsidised housing for young couples,
fertility project run by Dr Anahita Pundole, a third child
scheme, medical care for the elderly and home for the aged.
The Jews too have their own community organisations, Divekar
tells us but they are not as active as the Parsis. "Jewish
organisations conduct meetings to introduce young boys and girls
or carry programmes out for education but not on a large scale,"
Divekar says.
The diminishing races are fighting back. But as Prof Menachery
says, "They are fighting a half-hearted battle and a losing one
at that."