Parameswaran understood something that would define the rest of his life: science could not remain the property of laboratories, universities and governments. It had to become a language ordinary people could understand and use.

He wrote extensively in Malayalam because he believed knowledge became democratic only when it could be understood by people in their own language. Nuclear science, astronomy, mathematics, ecology, economics, social science and technology entered the pages of books and pamphlets that travelled far beyond the educated middle class.

He wrote for children, workers, teachers and new literates, making difficult subjects accessible without stripping them of their complexity.

That was his quiet revolution. He helped turn KSSP into one of India’s most remarkable people’s movements, where science became a method of questioning power.

Villagers could ask why a project was necessary. Students could challenge official claims. Citizens could examine the economic and ecological consequences of development. Knowledge no longer had to flow only from the government to the people. It could travel in the opposite direction too.

Science and Silent Valley

That transformation became particularly visible during the struggle to save Silent Valley. The proposed hydroelectric project in the pristine evergreen forests of Palakkad had powerful supporters. Kerala desperately needed electricity and the project was presented as a symbol of development. But Silent Valley was not merely another piece of forest. It was one of the last great remnants of tropical evergreen rainforest in the Western Ghats, carrying extraordinary biological wealth.

Parameswaran, along with environmentalist M K Prasad and others, brought scientific and economic scrutiny into the debate. The question was not simply whether one should love forests. It was whether destroying an irreplaceable ecological system was a rational way of producing electricity.

The campaign that followed became a watershed in India’s environmental history. Scientists, teachers, writers, students and ordinary citizens came together, and a government project was subjected to a level of public scrutiny that was unusual for the time. Eventually, the hydroelectric project was abandoned and Silent Valley survived.

But Parameswaran’s contribution to Silent Valley cannot be measured merely by the survival of one forest. He helped create an intellectual climate in which Kerala learnt to ask a fundamental question: development for whom? That question would travel into almost every major environmental struggle that followed.

Memories of a different kind of scientist

For those who encountered Parameswaran outside formal political or scientific institutions, there was another side to him. He could be demanding, intense and intellectually uncompromising, but he also had the ability to make people feel that their questions mattered. For a generation of young environmentalists, his importance lay not simply in what he wrote or the organisations he helped build, but in the confidence he gave ordinary people to enter conversations from which they had traditionally been excluded.

Anitha Santhi, Thiruvananthapuram-based environmentalist and coordinator of Tree Walk, recalls that Parameswaran was humility personified but possessed a will and a determination to remain steadfast in his positions and convictions.

That memory is important because Parameswaran’s influence was never confined to the formal institutions with which he was associated. His greatest legacy was the confidence he created in people who did not necessarily possess scientific qualifications, but who were willing to learn, ask questions and stand up for the places they lived in.

Environmental activist S Usha remembers another dimension of that influence, particularly the way Parameswaran connected science with everyday life and environmental responsibility.

“His connection to the masses was immense. Ordinary people turned to be champions of the causes he espoused,” recalls Usha.

These memories matter because Parameswaran’s public life can easily be reduced to a list of organisations, books, campaigns and ideological battles. Those who met him in the field remember something more human: an elderly intellectual who continued to believe that knowledge had meaning only when it reached people and helped them make choices about their own lives.

Beyond Silent Valley, towards Athirappilly

That question travelled into the battle over Athirappilly. The proposed hydroelectric project on the Chalakudy river brought into sharp focus the conflict between electricity generation and the protection of one of Kerala’s most ecologically significant riverine landscapes. Once again, the argument was not simply about trees and waterfalls. It was about the value of rivers, forests, biodiversity and the livelihoods and cultures that depend on them.

For Parameswaran, environmentalism was never an isolated concern. Ecology was inseparable from economics, politics and social justice. He understood that a forest could not be defended permanently without asking why people were dependent on its resources, who controlled land and technology, who benefited from large projects and who bore their costs.

That made his opposition to nuclear power particularly significant.

The nuclear scientist who became an anti-nuclear voice

Parameswaran was not an outsider attacking nuclear technology from ignorance. He had been trained in nuclear engineering and had worked inside India’s atomic establishment. Yet over the years he became increasingly critical of nuclear power, questioning its safety, the enormous costs involved, the risks to communities and the inadequacy of disaster preparedness.

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