History · 13 Aug 2026

Kerala Sastra Sahithya Parishad UPSC

Consider the following statements:

  1. The Kerala Sastra Sahithya Parishad (KSSP) was founded in 1962 as a Malayalam science-writers' collective and M.P. Parameswaran joined it as a full-time activist after leaving the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in 1975.
  2. Ernakulam was declared India's first fully literate district in 1990, the same year KSSP received the UNESCO Literacy Award.
  3. Kerala's 1996 experiment in decentralised planning drew explicitly on the ideas of economist Amartya Sen.
A1 only
B2 only
C1 and 2 only
D1, 2 and 3
This question is based on: The Scientist Who Quit BARC to Teach India to Read
Take this in full test mode → Instructions for 13 Aug 2026
About this question

Why in news

M.P. Parameswaran, founding figure of Kerala's people's science movement, died in Thrissur on August 11, 2026, at age 91, reviving attention on KSSP's role in literacy and decentralised governance.

Why for UPSC

UPSC frequently tests the precise intellectual lineage behind Indian governance experiments rather than just the outcome - here, distinguishing which economist's ideas actually shaped Kerala's decentralisation model is the kind of exact-attribution trap the exam favours.

Prelims summary

KSSP (founded 1962) made Ernakulam India's first fully literate district in 1990 and its later push for decentralised planning (1996) was ideologically grounded in E.F. Schumacher's "Small Is Beautiful," not in Amartya Sen's development economics.

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