M.Parameswaran : Literacy Campaigner

Back home, he joined the Kerala Sahitya Shastra Parishad (KSSP) and launched popularscience movements in Mumbai and Kerala. Thanks to his persuasion, in 1969 the Centreallocated the first Rs 1 crore package for non-Hindi languages. By 1973, Parameswaran hadmade himself quite unpopular in the BARC by his frequent attacks on its decadent workculture. He quit two years later to become a full-time CPI(M) worker. Over the nextdecade, he wrote over 400 books and monographs explaining Marx to the layman. Alongside,he worked with the KSSP, an association that was to bring an Alternative Nobel prize."More than literacy, the idea was to strengthen the local economy by inverting thepower pyramid." Today, he notes, Keralites are not simply "nearly 90 per centliterate", they have a "50 per cent say" on development matters.