Ahmedabad, Nov. 20: This home loan is free of EMIs but comes with a string attached. And a hoped-for attachment.

Loan tenure: 20 years.

Ahmedabad’s Parsi Panchayat is offering homes to young men and women as an “incentive” to get married and have kids to boost the numbers of the fast-shrinking community.

“We will provide a decent flat to young couples. The only thing we want is that young Parsi men and women shouldn’t delay their marriage because of financial or accommodation constraints,” said J.P. Anklesaria, a retired brigadier and president of the panchayat.

All that the men and women need to do is decide to get married and approach the panchayat, which would provide them with a flat. It will be theirs for the next 20 years.

If a kid is born, all the more reason to celebrate.

The panchayat, a representative body of the community, has taken the cue from its counterpart in Mumbai, home to 60 per cent of the world’s 93,000 Parsis.

The offer comes at a time a Parsi woman from Mumbai gave birth to twins, benefiting from the central government-sponsored Jiyo Parsi fertility scheme the Congress-led UPA had cleared last year.

Anklesaria said the Ahmedabad panchayat had “enough resources” to take care of young couples for at least another 20 years. “By then we expect them to earn enough to buy a house. Then they will move out so that another young couple can move in.”

The Mumbai panchayat, the first to come up with the offer, provides flats to any young couple free for a lifetime. “However, we will give the flats for 20 years,” said Anklesaria, who had recently offered a flat to a young Parsi who told him he wanted to get married but couldn’t afford a flat. “After that, we decided in principle to give a flat to any young couple willing to marry.”

Xerxes Rao, a young Parsi architect, said he had once approached the panchayat eight years ago to utilise its land bank when he was about to get married.

“Most people, like myself, have lived in two-bedroom apartments with their parents. After marriage, I had to move out,” he said. “These days it’s difficult to buy a house in Ahmedabad. It means a monthly instalment of Rs 30,000, a huge amount for someone who has just started a family,” Rao, who works in a private construction firm, said, adding he was happy that his suggestion had finally been adopted.

According to available data, 30 per cent of Parsis remain single or marry very late, by when it becomes difficult to conceive. Of the 1,750 Parsis in Ahmedabad, 500 are above 60. A skewed death rate — 22 to 24 deaths for eight births — has also affected Ahmedabad’s Parsi population.

“We are naturally concerned about the fate of our community,” Anklesaria said, explaining that “conversions are not allowed in our religion”.

In Calcutta, the Parsi population has shrunk by more than half in three decades — from 1,600 in the 1980s to around 700 now.

One reason behind the dwindling numbers is the tradition of not accepting as part of the community the children of a Parsi girl who marries a non-Parsi, although kids born to a Parsi man and a non-Parsi woman are considered Parsis.