P. Raghavan was born on 15 October 1945, the youngest of seven children of Cheviri Raman Nair and Perail Maniamma in Munnad, Bedaduka in present-day Kasargod district.
[1] He was a volunteer in the Parliament March organized by KSYF with the slogan 'Job or Unemployment Wages' and was arrested for it and served a month's imprisonment in Tihar Jail.
He started getting noticed in politics when he led the Mehboob bus workers' strike while he was a student at Kasaragod College.
[5] As a trade union activist, he was at the forefront of organizing workers in the unorganised sector in the Kasaragod region.
[4] During his college days, Raghavan took up the incident of the killing of a bus conductor Varadaraja Pai.
[3] Later, under the leadership of P. Raghavan, the District Motor Workers' Cooperative Society was established and buses were launched under the name 'Varadaraja Pai'.
[3] Raghavan, who organized the motor workers and strengthened the union, became the district president of the union, the state president of the bus workers' federation and a member of the national working committee of the federation.