I have had the good fortune to know well and be inspired by four remarkable people — Salim Ali, Edward O Wilson, M K Prasad and Chandiprasad Bhatt, all of them great lovers of nature and dedicated to a higher goal transcending narrow self-interests.
I first heard of M K Prasad in connection with his initially single-handed and single-minded campaign in 1973 to save the Silent Valley. When I got to know him well six years later, I discovered that he was a rarity among the community of scientists, a person driven by social concerns and committed to applying his scientific learning to advance the causes he held dear to his heart.
His obsession is to empower the common man with a spirit of enquiry, with an urge to question all authority, be it the priests of the old who would not allow lower castes to draw water from their wells or the priests of modernity who preach that we should meekly accept pollution and despoilment of pristine nature on the altar of progress.
M K Prasad was born on Vypeen, at the mouth of the Periyar and an island of great natural beauty spoiled by pollution. He was an Ezhava, of a community traditionally engaged in toddy tapping and barred from higher education and the learned professions.
‘World has lost a champion of nature & democracy’
But it was their constant contact with the live nature as toddy tappers that ensured many Ezhavas, including MKP’s uncle Krishna Seeri, became competent Ayurvedic physicians. Ayyappan, a powerful writer and orator, was born on Vypeen close to MKP’s ancestral home, and Ayyappan’s egalitarian, rational philosophy influenced MKP from an early age. His family expected MKP to follow in his uncle’s footsteps, but he decided to become a botanist and joined the academia.
This was the time that science writing in Malayalam was beginning to be taken up seriously leading to the establishment of Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad (KSSP) in 1962. Attracted to their publications, MKP joined KSSP. An independent, original thinker, he steered KSSP towards broader goals, examining issues like pollution of the Chaliyar and saving the biodiversity-rich Silent Valley. It was a good omen that the first time I met him, we spent a whole day together on a trip to Silent Valley on October 2, 1979.
That started a friendship that had lasted well over four decades. I worked closely with him while in Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru and on retirement in Pune. I vividly remember sleeping next to him on mats in a lodge in Thrissur and participating the next day, February 28, 1980, in a lively people’s Science Parliament debating the Silent Valley issue on the open temple ground.
Our interactions continued with the work of Centre-state joint committee on SV project in 1983 and the literacy campaign launched in 1986 that led to Ernakulam becoming the first totally literate district in the country under MKP’s leadership. He then launched the panchayat- level Resource Mapping Programme for the neo-literates that in turn led to People’s Planning Campaign of 1995-96.
I spent as much of my time as possible with him during these activities, and the approach developed during the PP Campaign was a strong influence in my work on the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel. He was a pillar of support during the work of WGEEP and arranged for promptly translating it in Malayalam. We continued to meet and I kept learning from him all along, including retaining his spirit at 90 years of age. With his demise, Kerala, India and the world have lost a great champion of nature and democracy. The author is an eminent ecologist and academic
M K Prasad no more
Environmentalist M K Prasad, who spearheaded the Save Silent Valley movement in the 1970s, passed away in Kochi on Monday. The 89-year-old breathed his last while undergoing treatment for Covid. Prasad had led the protest against the state government’s plan to build a hydroelectric project in the evergreen tropical rain forests of Silent Valley. As the head of the Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad, he brought together prominent green activists to oppose the project.