Space & Physics
M P Parameswaran: The Scientist Who Took Science to the People
M. P. Parameswaran, who died aged 91 on August 11, 2026, spent decades taking science beyond laboratories through KSSP, Malayalam science writing, literacy campaigns and environmental activism.
M P Parameswaran, who died on 11 August 2026 at the age of 91, spent his life trying to close the distance between scientific knowledge and the people it was meant to serve. Trained as a nuclear engineer, he walked away from India’s atomic establishment in 1975 to build one of the country’s most influential people’s science movements from the ground up.
He leaves behind an unusual body of work spanning nuclear science, science writing, literacy, language technology, environmental activism, rural development and political thought.
What connected these seemingly disparate pursuits was a single conviction: science should not remain confined to experts. Scientific knowledge, he argued through his work, had to become accessible enough for ordinary people to understand, question and participate in decisions affecting their lives.
From Nuclear Science to People’s Science
Parameswaran was born on 18 January 1935 in Kiralur (Kiraloor), a village in Thrissur district then part of the princely state of Cochin. He graduated in electrical engineering from the College of Engineering, Thiruvananthapuram, in 1956, before travelling to the Soviet Union, where he earned a doctorate in nuclear engineering from the Moscow Power Engineering Institute in 1965. He joined the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), India’s premier nuclear research institution, in 1957 and remained there until 1975 — becoming part of the scientific establishment building the foundations of India’s nuclear programme.
But the work that made him a public intellectual began when he left the laboratory.
In 1975, Parameswaran resigned from BARC and joined the Kerala Sasthra Sahithya Parishad (KSSP). The move changed the direction of his life. KSSP had begun as a forum of science writers but evolved, with Parameswaran among its central figures, into a much broader people’s science movement. Under his involvement, science communication became connected with literacy, health, environment, technology and development.
He helped take science out of laboratories and classrooms and into public spaces — through books, magazines, campaigns, village meetings and travelling programmes.
Language was Central to This Effort
Parameswaran wrote extensively in Malayalam, Kerala’s regional language, producing popular science books and hundreds of articles on subjects including nuclear science, astronomy, mathematics, ecology and social science. His contribution was not simply to translate scientific concepts; he helped establish Malayalam as a language in which scientific ideas could be discussed with a wider public.
His interest in accessibility even extended to technology itself. Between 1969 and 1973, while on deputation from BARC, he served as Assistant Director of the State Institute of Languages in Kerala. During this period he was involved in developing a Malayalam keyboard layout for typewriters — work later associated with the development of the INSCRIPT keyboard layout used in Indian-language computing today.
It was a small but revealing example of his approach: technology had little value if people could not use it.
Building a National People’s Science Movement
Parameswaran’s contribution went beyond writing. He played a major role in taking the people’s science movement beyond Kerala. In 1987, as convener of the National Organising Committee, he was central to the Bharat Jan Vigyan Jatha, a nationwide science communication campaign that took scientific ideas to communities rather than waiting for audiences to come to scientific institutions. He was also instrumental in establishing the All India People’s Science Network, bringing together people’s science organisations from across the country.
These initiatives changed the scale of science communication. It became not merely the work of individual writers explaining discoveries, but an organised effort to build public engagement with science.
Literacy As Participation
The same philosophy shaped Parameswaran’s work in literacy. He played an important role in the Total Literacy Campaign in Ernakulam, in which KSSP worked with the district administration to take literacy beyond conventional classroom structures. The experience later became an important model for India’s national literacy campaign.
In 1990, he was also instrumental in organising the Bharat Gyan Vigyan Jatha in support of the National Literacy Mission, a movement that eventually contributed to the formation of the Bharat Gyan Vigyan Samiti.
For Parameswaran, literacy and scientific awareness were closely related. Knowing how to read was only the beginning; people also needed the ability to examine information, weigh evidence and participate in public decisions.
When Science Met Development
Parameswaran’s questions became more difficult when he began examining the consequences of technology itself. He increasingly focused on appropriate technology, rural development, decentralisation and environmental sustainability, and was associated with the Integrated Rural Technology Centre.
He was also a central figure in two of Kerala’s defining environmental campaigns: the movement against the Silent Valley hydroelectric project, which helped save one of India’s last untouched rainforests, and the later opposition to the Athirappilly hydroelectric project. Both battles shaped his conviction that development decisions could not be left to engineers and planners alone.
The Bhopal gas disaster of 1984 sharpened these concerns further. It demonstrated that scientific and industrial advances could produce enormous social and environmental risks when technological decisions were made without adequate attention to safety and public accountability. For Parameswaran and the people’s science movement, the lesson was not to reject science or technology but to ask harder questions about their use: Who benefits? Who bears the risks? And who gets to decide?
Questioning the Idea of Progress
His intellectual journey eventually took him beyond science communication into a broader critique of development. In his book Fourth World: Dream and Reality, Parameswaran set out an alternative model built around decentralisation, ecological sustainability, democracy and a critique of consumerism. The “Fourth World” thesis brought him into sustained conflict with the Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPI(M), to which he had long belonged, and ultimately led to his expulsion from the party.
His political conclusions remain a subject of debate. But they reveal an important feature of his intellectual life: he was willing to question established ideas of progress, including those within his own political tradition. He later reflected on that journey — from young engineer in Moscow to nuclear scientist, people’s science activist and Marxist theorist who found himself outside the party he had served for decades — in his Malayalam autobiography, Kaalaharanamillatha Swapnangal (Timeless Dreams).
For Parameswaran, development could not simply be measured by economic growth or technological advancement. It also had to be judged by its effects on people, communities and the environment.
Recognition
Parameswaran’s writing and activism were recognised early and late in his career. He received the Books for Neoliterates Award in 1962, the Basic and Cultural Literature Award in 1964, and the Children’s Literature Award in 1984. In 2022, the Government of Kerala honoured him with the Kerala Sree Award, the state’s third-highest civilian award, for his lifetime contribution to science and society.
Science Without Silos
Parameswaran’s contributions are spread across several fields. He helped build KSSP into one of India’s most influential people’s science movements. He helped establish national networks for science communication. He wrote extensively in Malayalam and brought scientific subjects into public discourse. He contributed to language technology. He played important roles in literacy campaigns that reached far beyond Kerala. He helped shape landmark environmental struggles. And he became a prominent critic of environmentally and socially unsustainable models of progress.
But reducing his legacy to this list would miss what made these contributions part of the same story. Parameswaran did not see science as a body of knowledge that moved in one direction — from laboratories to the public. He saw it as something that should enable people to participate. That is why his career could move so naturally from nuclear research to Malayalam publishing, from science campaigns to literacy, and from technology to questions of ecology and democracy.
His relevance may be even clearer today. Artificial intelligence, biotechnology, climate change, nuclear energy and public health increasingly shape everyday decisions, while the knowledge needed to understand them often remains concentrated among specialists. Parameswaran spent much of his life trying to narrow that distance.
He began by working with some of India’s most sophisticated scientific technologies. He ended up devoting his life to a more fundamental question: how can scientific knowledge become part of public life without losing its rigour — and without leaving the public behind? His answer was not simply to popularise science. It was to make people participants in it.
Space & Physics
JWST Finds Water Around a Dying Star Near the Milky Way’s Black Hole
A dying star near the Milky Way’s central black hole is shedding water, gas and dust into one of the galaxy’s most extreme environments.
A dying star nearing the end of its life is shedding material into space just 0.55 light-years from the Milky Way’s central black hole. And somehow, some of that material is holding on. New observations from the James Webb Space Telescope have revealed water and oxygen-rich dust surrounding IRS 3, an evolved star living remarkably close to Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the heart of our galaxy.
The finding gives astronomers a rare view of what happens when an ordinary stage of stellar evolution unfolds in an anything-but-ordinary neighbourhood.
A Dying Star Beside a Black Hole
IRS 3 is an asymptotic giant branch (AGB) star, a late stage in the life of stars like this one. As such stars age, they swell, cool and lose material through powerful stellar winds. IRS 3 is doing exactly that. Gas and dust are streaming away from the star, creating a large envelope around it.
The star sits only about 0.55 light-years from Sagittarius A*. That may sound distant, but on the scale of the Galactic Centre it is remarkably close. Earth is about 26,000 light-years away from the same black hole.
Around Sagittarius A* is a crowded, energetic environment filled with intense radiation, dense gas and powerful gravitational forces. Astronomers have long wondered how stars manage to evolve and shed material there. IRS 3 is offering an answer.
Webb Finds Water in the Stellar Outflow
NASA‘s James Webb Space Telescope looked at IRS 3 using its Mid-Infrared Instrument, or MIRI. Infrared observations are particularly useful here because the dust surrounding the star glows strongly at these wavelengths.
The observations revealed oxygen-rich dust in the star’s envelope. They also produced the first detection of water in this material. This does not mean Webb found a pool, cloud or droplets of water. The water exists as molecules mixed into the hot gas and dust surrounding the star.
That distinction matters because molecules can be vulnerable in the harsh environment around the Galactic Centre. Radiation can break them apart, while the conditions around a supermassive black hole can affect the material being expelled by nearby stars. Yet water molecules are present around IRS 3.
The Star is Feeding Its Surroundings
IRS 3 is losing material rapidly as it approaches the end of its life. Researchers estimate that the star is shedding roughly the mass of Earth every 18 days. That enormous outflow is important beyond IRS 3 itself.
When evolved stars lose their outer layers, they return material to the space between stars. The gas carries elements produced during the star’s lifetime, while newly formed dust becomes part of the reservoir from which future cosmic structures can emerge. IRS 3 is therefore caught in a familiar cycle of stellar life: a star is dying, but the material it releases can become part of something else.
What makes this case unusual is that the recycling process is happening almost next door to a supermassive black hole.
How Much Can Survive Here?
The observation does not mean that the black hole has little influence on its surroundings. Sagittarius A* still creates an extreme environment, and the researchers are interested precisely because IRS 3 shows that stellar material can persist within it.
“Galactic centres are among the most extreme environments,” said Florian Peißker of the University of Cologne, the study’s lead author to media. With Webb, researchers can now examine the material around stars such as IRS 3 in much greater detail and ask how stellar winds, dust formation and molecular chemistry behave so close to a black hole. The answer emerging from IRS 3 is intriguing: the environment may be extreme, but it does not necessarily shut down the chemistry of a dying star.
For IRS 3, the end of its stellar life is already underway. Its outer layers are drifting away into the Galactic Centre, carrying dust, molecules and the chemical ingredients of future cosmic systems with them. Even in the shadow of the Milky Way’s central black hole, a dying star is still leaving something behind.
Space & Physics
India’s New Satellite Will Be Tested During Disasters
India’s latest Earth-observation satellite, EOS-05, could give disaster agencies a broader and more frequent view of floods, landslides and other hazards. But its real value will depend on how quickly satellite data can be turned into information that helps authorities act on the ground.
Space & Physics
India’s Moonshot Moment: Can New Delhi Turn Orbit Into Influence
India’s space mission is entering a new era, from Gaganyaan and space stations to private startups, space diplomacy and national security.
Gaganyaan is only the beginning. India’s space mission faces new opportunities and challenges as human spaceflight, diplomacy, private industry and security reshape its ambitions beyond Earth.
Indian human space programme Gaganyaan is mooted by Indian Space Research Organisation. This ambitious space mission aims to send Indian astronauts in Outer Space indigenously by the proactive leadership of the Indian government. India as a leading space power of the world aims to demonstrate her space capabilities and research in the final frontier. The Gaganyaan mission is the dream of 1.4 billion Indians. The programme will be initiated in 2027 creating a historic mark in the collective space exploration journeys. This is a stepping stone as NASA is envisioning to make Moon as the next base for active space programmes by 2030.
According to NASA this spectacular feat will be achieved soon within 3 years. NASA has asked India’s ISRO to join for the permanent Lunar base in the south pole of Moon. Here comes the significance of Indo-US space partnership and how India will navigate through the space diplomacy keeping in mind of Indian dream of Bharatiya Antariksh Station and the long lasting commitment to strategic autonomy and an independent foreign policy. India already signed the Artemis accords in June 2023. If India is ready to be part of this initiative, it will mark the beginning of a new era in India-United States space cooperation. The question is how India will navigate this process, protecting its sovereignty and national interest while engaging with NASA to help build a new civilisation of space travellers on the lunar surface. According to media reports India’s spectacular success with the Chandrayaan missions has led the United States to choose India as a natural partner, inviting it to join space exploration programmes on the Moon.
India’s Space Mission: The Next Frontier of Global Power
The Gaganyaan mission is significant for strengthening Indian space station’s vision. The Bharatiya Antariksh Station is an Indian space station which is a symbol of Indian space nationalism and a centre for joint research with friendly nations. India is actively pushing for space diplomacy and it is evident from the trainings received by Gaganyaan crew members. They have trained in Russia and the United States, continuing India’s commitment to strong bilateral ties with both Cold War-era rivals. Space exploration and travel are combined with diplomacy, as Indian foreign policy in a multipolar world order pushes for strong partnerships with both Russia and the United States.
Indian Air Force veteran Wing Commander Rakesh Sharma was the first Indian cosmonaut to reach the final frontier, in a Soviet space mission. Following this historic feat, Kalpana Chawla and Sunita Williams travelled to outer space on American missions. Recently, Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla represented India in the Axiom mission successfully travelling to International Space Station and returned safely as a national hero. He is also part of the Gaganyaan mission. Colonel Anil Menon, who is part of the US Space Force, is also now in outer space. He has strong Indian connections, making him the first astronaut with roots in Kerala to explore the domain of outer space.
With privatisation in outer space in India, Skyroot Aerospace, a private company based in Hyderabad, successfully launched Vikram-1 rocket to low Earth orbit. Thus India is taking leverage of the infinite possibilities chasing stars and galaxies. Indian space ambitions are at a historic juncture now, with over 400 private Space startups. Another mission is aiming for a reusable re-entry vehicle, targeted for launch in 2027, building on ISRO’s success with the Pushpak mission, the Reusable Launch Vehicle Landing Experiment, in 2024.
However, there are concerns in India’s space sector, with many ISRO scientists seeking early retirement. The efficiency of major projects like Aditya and Gaganyaan should not be affected by this. Former ISRO Chairman G Madhavan Nair shared his concerns with the media about bureaucratisation within the organisation. ISRO is a symbol of India’s space story which is filled with resilience and strength of great visionary leaders like Dr Vikram Sarabhai and Dr APJ Abdul Kalam. Unfortunately, there have been budgetary cuts to major ISRO space projects. The government’s focus on Viksit Bharat, a holistically developed India, is only possible with investment in science and technology, and in-depth research in the domain of outer space.
Outer space is militarised, and the race for resource nationalism is a reality. For India to emerge as a global power, investment in space exploration is inevitable. Nations are increasingly aware of the strategic use of outer space for securing national interests. Satellites with civilian and national security purposes are critical assets of any nation. India too has many civilian and strategic assets in outer space, and protecting these is the responsibility of the government. The anti-satellite test Mission Shakti is a milestone demonstrating India’s hard-power capabilities in outer space. Some nations have capabilities such as laser-guided weapons, which can disable or destroy an enemy’s assets during conflict. Space is a key domain for ensuring seamless communication and intelligence-sharing during both war and peace.
Intelligence and surveillance are key factors in winning the wars of the present and future. The dominance in space technology and information superiority will determine the victories of nations fighting for their national interest.
In India, the share of higher education in the annual budgetary allocation remains low. A young generation passionate to explore arenas of space science is to be inculcated with the right mindset. Allocation of funds in education sector is a key requirement for building a strong India with educated and skilled youth. ISRO’s active collaboration with 100 Atal Tinkering Labs is a positive step in inculcating the spirit of scientific enquiry at the grassroots level. Support and encouragement for students in the creative arts and sciences is the need of the hour. Atal Tinkering Labs and India’s startup ecosystem can achieve greater synergy, ensuring a seamless transition from school life to entrepreneurship, from plan to execution.
Human activity has actively degraded the ecosystem, impacting life on both land and water. Now, with active competition in the arena of outer space, space debris is a serious global security challenge. This debris travels swiftly in outer space, damaging active space assets including civilian and defence satellites. The young budding scientists of India need to re-invent and discover practical solutions to the pressing global challenge of space debris and work with relentless passion for making a strong and stable India.
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