Right way of living

Recent articles on the Pallonji Shapoorji Home for Senior Citizens of The B. D. Petit Parsee General Hospital and the dakhmenashini controversy prompted me to think about the problems of the community from a demographic perspective. Both the above articles refer to old age and death, both inevitable milestones of life, but nevertheless milestones that occur towards life’s end, not its beginning or zenith.

My concern is that the community’s agenda and its resources are getting hijacked by its old people, not its young. Every generation has its own concerns, and looks at its problems in its own way. In childhood the concerns may be as simple as a candy bar, a nice pair of sneakers, or a visit to a movie. In youth, education and finding a suitable mate take on some importance. In the prime of life, the concerns may shift to wealth building, and helping the next generation get ahead. In old age, the imminent approach of death leads to a concern about its issues and customs.

As the community ages, the demographic pyramid gets inverted. There are more old people than young people. Consequently, agenda setting and resource use of the community gets dominated by old people and their concerns. The effect gets accentuated by the fact that older people are usually retired, and have more time on their hands to devote to community issues.

Usually this should not matter. But in a community facing a demographic crisis, it matters more than it should. Demographic crises are man-made. There is nothing inevitable about them. What is begun by man can be ended by man. But it requires wise policies and focusing the community’s agenda on those policies. Demography is destiny and the community’s future will get decided only by this issue.

Bluntly put, the only way of dealing with this issue is to get the community’s young men and women together to produce another generation. In a group of people with a religious identity, and prohibitions against entry through conversion, this is the only way to address a demographic crisis. Rather than devoting community resources and agenda setting to the task of living, we are obsessing about vultures and sun mirrors and the task of dying. Does anyone realize the absurdity of a community that professes to follow a life-affirming religion -– Zoroastrianism — but is more concerned about the right way of dying, than the right way of living?

ADIL RUSTOMJEE