Youth affairs ignored

A meeting of the West Zone B anjumans of the Federation of the Parsi Zoroastrian Anjumans of India (FPZAI) was held in Ahmedabad on July 28, 2013 hosted by Areez Khambatta, vice president of West Zone B with logistic help by the Ahmedabad Parsi Panchayat (APP). Other than certain specific matters, everything was taken care of by Khambatta who literally dominated the planning and conducting of the meet as only he can and in a matter which is now so common that it does not surprise people who have been observing him since many years.
Being a youth, my main grievance was that in spite of the agenda having a separate time slot for youth affairs, when the time came for discussion of the same, Khambatta casually brushed it aside saying that since there were no youth present they had nothing to take up under that section and moved on to other topics. What he ignored was that besides myself (I was not seated at the main table but was present at the meeting in my capacity as managing committee member of APP) there were at least three persons present who qualified as being youths (at least for our community, where we tend to consider anyone up to the age of 40 as youth). Khushman Tamboli of Rajkot, Persi Buhariwala of Vyara who had come along with his father, and Parhad Postwala of Ahmedabad were present. In the past Postwala has represented other anjumans as a proxy member and is an avid supporter of Khambatta.
One may argue that our religion and its followers face many serious challenges and issues other than those that concern youth, but that does not mean that one should simply ignore youth affairs in favor of other issues. In fact many of the burning issues of our community — whether the population, late marriages, inter-caste marriages, increased divorces, housing, declining rate of children per married couple, lack of entrepreneurial skills and many others — are related to the youth and need to be taken up very seriously. Though there was some discussion over housing, marriage bureaus and infertility clinics run by the Bombay Parsi Punchayet, much more could have been taken up at the West Zone B meet which claims to represent about half of the entire Federation. There was much discussion regarding matters related to defunct anjumans which technically do not come under the West Zone B but sadly there was not much on matters which really affect our community as youth are its future and no community can survive if it does not care about its youngsters in the correct manner.
Some years back during similar Federation meets, there was a practice amongst many anjumans to include one youth body member to accompany the representative so that he/she could not only be groomed for taking on community leadership in later years but also be made aware about the different issues and matters related to anjumans in other places as well. Sadly, this practice is rarely followed now and is one of the reasons why, other than the annual FPZAI meeting in Bombay where there is representation by the Federation of Zoroastrian Youth Associations of India (FOZYA), Zoroastrian Youth for the Next Generation and Holiday Programme for Youth, meetings of other members of the Federation have no youth representation worth the name. Apart from some of the young proxy candidates of the pro-WAPIZ (World Alliance of Parsi Irani Zarthoshtis) and anti-WAPIZ groups who attend not because they are concerned about the problems of youth but merely as a show of strength for their respective camps, there is virtually no one who can be termed as a youth. This leads to situations like the present one when Khambatta without noticing the three youths in the hall just went ahead to the next point, skipping any discussion on youth affairs. I am sure that he is not even aware of the fact that the next All India Youth Meet is at Dahanu/Bordi in November, and even if he were he would surely make no efforts to ensure maximum participation from anjumans under his jurisdiction.
It is high time that each and every anjuman of our country has a reserved seat (whether elected, selected or nominated) for a youth (below the age of 35, not 40) and the Federation also makes it compulsory for all anjumans (who have a sizeable Parsi population) to have one youth accompanying their representative to meets. Often two or three people represent the same anjuman but none of them is a youth. This is understandable in the case of anjumans which have hardly any Parsis left, but cities like Ahmedabad, Baroda, Surat, Navsari, Poona, Nagpur, Hyderabad, Madras, Delhi and others that still have sizeable Parsi population have no reason not to have a single youth attending such meets.
One can also argue that unlike in the 1990s when a lot of youth bodies were active at many places across India, today other than Bombay there are very few places like Poona, Ahmedabad and Baroda which have active and functional youth bodies. Even Surat and Navsari where there is a sizeable youth population and Hyderabad, Bangalore and Nagpur where in the recent past there used to be youth bodies, only some welfare committees remain that conduct activities related to the youth. A well defined and operational youth body conducting frequent youth related activities is still lacking at many places. But this does not mean that we should let the situation deteriorate further. Each anjuman with a sizeable population should attempt to have its own or an independent youth wing. Wherever possible, these youth bodies should be incorporated into the work and activities of the anjuman as volunteers to enable youngsters to become more responsible and committed to community affairs when they grow older. This has been successfully done in Ahmedabad and I don’t see any reason why it cannot be replicated at other places.
Sometimes we tend to speak more and do less. It is time to reduce mindless discussions and take up tangible action which would ensure that today’s youth can lead our community in the future in a better way than is being done today.
ARIZ K. BOKDAWALLA
General secretary, Parsee Youth League of Ahmedabad
Treasurer, FOZYA
Managing committee member, APP
ariz_bokdawalla@idbi.co.in