I am Prashanth Nuggehalli Srinivas, Prashanth for short and NS for shorter and daktre for better. I have been on the english wikipedia since 7th February, 2005. I am from Bangalore, India where I did my schooling and learnt nothing. I went to Mysore where I did my medicine to become a doctor and learnt something. I went a bit south to the forests of BR Hills where I actually started living (and learning!). For my masters in public health, I went to ITM, Antwerp where I learnt some more. For my PhD in public health I studied how organisational change could occur within public services such as health in Tumkur district, through a PhD in public health from Université catholique de Louvain. Now, I mostly live in BR Hills and Bangalore. I have a great interest in life, human or otherwise, particularly birds (all my bird records go on eBird) and wildlife. Apart from various public health issues mostly to do with health systems research and teaching, I also do some work on mental health.
On the English wikipedia, I contribute mainly to articles on birds and plants. I also dabble a bit with medical articles especially public health, historical biographies of little known naturalists, especially British and on biographies of notable contemporary Indian people. My photographs generally go on commons and are on these same subjects. I have earlier done some mechanical yet important tasks such as fighting vandalism, vote on tools, ask for page protection and watch BLPs. I am also around on Strategy wiki, where I like to think that I am doing something. What I cannot write on wikipedia, I write for my website. I am a passionate advocate of FOSS, especially for health care and education and am a member of PANACeA, a network promoting research on ehealth and an Advisor on Mendeley . I conduct hands-on workshops and trainings on Wikipedia, mediawiki and Mendeley in schools and institutions, like this one in Mangalore. Leave me a note if you are interested in doing one.
...that vulnerability to bad science, quackery, slimming products and expensive shiny objects is a side-effect of being human, as opposed to being a chimpanzee. I shun these, but tolerate them.
...that health, education and social welfare are state subjects and markets fail in creating equity in these sectors.
...that the the root of hegemony is knowledge inequity. Wikipedia is an expression of knowledge equity.
...in the future, a welfare state will grant RIGHT TO BANDWIDTH that guarantees a reasonable bandwidth to every citizen of the state.
...solidarity, once upon a time, a defining character of society is now a goal...hmm.
...we are limited by our language. The better your language, more the limitations.