ARUNIMA
Kottapuram, Thrissur 680004
Kerala, India
Tel/Fax: 91 487 238 0281
Fax: 91 487 238 0201
E-mail: mpparam@sancharnet.in
A prolific writer who has won several awards for his numerous popular books on a wide-range of issues from astronomy and nuclear physics to women and social change, ecology and society and participatory democracy, he was one of the pioneers of a nationwide movement that launched a massive literacy campaign in India through the Kerala Shastra Sahitya Parishad, All-India People Science Network and the Bharat Gyan Vigyan Samiti.
Subconsciously a radical leftist from early childhood – a conscious leftist by the time of completing engineering education, MP never dreamed of political work as a profession as he was generally interested in engineering and science. In 1962, he went to Moscow and learned Russian. His three-year stay in the Soviet Union taught him the advantages of socialism and the mistakes of ‘USSR’. Gandhian and Marxian thoughts, ideas such as decentralization, dispersal of industries, unification of intellectual and physical labour distinction between real and pseudo needs created by capitalism, true and participative democracy, transparency etc. were some of the basic ideas that took root in himself while in the USSR.
He helped build the All India People’s Science Network and was its secretary and later, president. He initiated the people’s resource mapping and local level planning programme which was later on taken up by the Kerala State Government and has continuously been involved in efforts to improve education in general and school education in particular for the past three decades.