C. P. was acknowledged for his talent as a lawyer, administrator and visionary. Edwin Samuel Montagu, who served as the Secretary of State for India from 1917 to 1922, described him as "one of the cleverest men in India". He is credited with having transformed Kanyakumari district into the rice-bowl of Travancore and is acclaimed for being the first person to envisage the industrialization of Madras Presidency. He is also regarded as an egalitarian and the first caste Hindu lawyer to admit a Dalit, N. Sivaraj as his junior. Under his leadership, Travancore became the first princely state to abolish capital punishment, first to introduce free and compulsory education and the first princely state to be connected to the rest of India by air. M. G. Ramachandran, former Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu recollected at C. P.'s birth centenary celebrations in 1979 that C. P. was the first to introduce the midday meal scheme in the form of the Vanchi Poor Fund in Travancore. C. N. Annadurai remarked at a speech in 1967 that C. P. was the first person in India to suggest a plan for interlinking the nation's rivers. However, his greatest achievement is believed to be the Temple Entry Proclamation which for the first time, permitted Dalits to enter Hindu temples which he introduced despite a severe threat to his life.