About Him | Mysite

Introduction

Sh. P.S.Krishnan had been an outstanding champion of the exploited and deprived sections of Indian society. Throughout his life from his student days in his native Kerala and later as a member of I.A.S. in the Andhra Pradesh cadre (initially Hyderabad cadre prior to linguistic reorganisation of States in 1956) and during his post-retirement phase, he had been vigorously and consistently working for the advancement and empowerment of the Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST) and Socially and Educationally Backward Classes (SEdBC) [also known as Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and Backward Classes (BCs)], including religious minorities belonging to them.

He sought to mould governance and public administration into a pro-active instrument of reaching out to the deprived communities. In this quest, he often faced antagonism, hostility and persecution. He had been pulled up more than once for his totally unconventional ways of governance.

His life got a decisive turn in opposition to “Untouchability” and the Caste System and towards the ideology of Social Justice and Social Equality in his early teen age, following a news-report, he read, of Dr. Ambedkar’s speech that one in every seven Indians is an “Untouchable”, his father the late Shri P. L. Subramanian’s interpretation of that speech with his own disapproval of “Untouchability”, and subsequently his association with peers belonging to different communities in the course of social work, and his wide reading of the works of Swami Vivekananda, Dr Ambedkar, Narayangaguru, Marx etc. and the literature of social realism in Malayalam, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, English. He entered adult life with a fully formed ideology of Social Justice and Social Equality, which he has been following throughout his life.

Shri Krishnan’s empathy and deep dedication for the cause of deprived social categories, while himself not born in a family of the deprived social categories, have imparted fresh and significant turns to the path of socio-economic development and protection of the SCs, STs and BCs.

He was a polyglot and knew most of the Indian languages and therefore could converse with the common people in different States. His pioneering and inspiring work and his leadership to the upcoming generations of deprived social classes and categories and their sympathizers, his networking with and guidance of non-governmental organizations and social workers in this field, his contribution as an expert in this area through his papers, articles and lectures, unraveling the functional role and working of the Indian Caste System and the remedies open to the SC, ST and BC through governmental, voluntary and community efforts, clearly mark him out as a symbol of the struggle for Social Justice.

The details of his work for and his views on important issues of Social Justice have been discussed in the “A Crusade for Social Justice – P. S. Krishnan: Bending Governance towards the Deprived”, originally published by South Vision Books, Chennai, which is being translated and published in different languages.