VOICE OF SILENT VALLEY

M K Prasad spread environmental consciousness until his last breath

- K A SHAJI

ON JANUARY 15 this year, Kerala-based environmentalist M K Prasad signed a letter presented by a group of citizens and development professionals to the state's Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan. The letter raised apprehensions about the proposed multi-crore high-speed rail project, Silver Line, which Prasad and the other signatories say would spell disaster for the state in multiple ways. Two days later, the 89-year-old succumbed to COVID-19-related complications at a private hospital.

A celebrated botany professor, Prasad had a rich legacy of environmentalism since the 1970s. While teaching at the University of Calicut, he wrote an article in Malayalam weekly Mathrubhumi on severe environmental and social costs of a mega hydroelectric power project planned in Silent Valley National Park in Palakkad district. The article evoked public response and ignited India’s first successful movement against a dam project. Then prime minister Indira Gandhi scrapped the project in 1984.