India R.Sankar FDC

India FDC
Name: R.Sankar
Date of Issue: 30 April 2009

R.Sankar was a Freedom fighter, educationalist, lawyer, journalist, administrator, social reformer and political leader.

Sankar was born on April 30, 1909 to Raman and Kunchali Amma at Puthoor village near Kottarakara in Kollam District. Although he grew up in a lower middle class environment fraught with financial and social constraints, he was fortunate enough to obtain good education in his formative years. His formal education began in Puthoor primary school and later continued in an English School in Kottarakara.

Sankar's most outstanding contribution has been in the field of education in a state where the vast majority of lower caste hindus could not enter schools and colleges on account of the obnoxious caste system that prevailed in the princely states before independence.

If today Kerala is the most literate State in India with literacy rate of around 95 per cent, it is because of Sankar's farisighted initiatives. When he became Minister for Education in Kerala, Sankar carried forward the inclusive education movement by facilitating the setting up of several junior colleges in different parts of the State almost all of which were in the private sector, a revelutionary and innovative policy which made higher education accessible to ecnomically poor sections who could not afford to go to major cities where most colleges were located.

R.Sankar breathed his last on 6-11-1972.