top of page

By:

Anil D. Salve

21 March 2026 at 8:11:09 pm

A Drought of Wisdom in an Ocean of Information

We live in an age where information is everywhere. With a single click, we can access news from across the world, thousands of opinions, countless videos and endless claims. Knowledge has never been so accessible. Yet, in this overwhelming flow of information, something increasingly scarce is discernment-the ability to distinguish what deserves our belief from what deserves our doubt. Information and knowledge are not the same. Reading, watching or hearing something does not automatically...

A Drought of Wisdom in an Ocean of Information

We live in an age where information is everywhere. With a single click, we can access news from across the world, thousands of opinions, countless videos and endless claims. Knowledge has never been so accessible. Yet, in this overwhelming flow of information, something increasingly scarce is discernment-the ability to distinguish what deserves our belief from what deserves our doubt. Information and knowledge are not the same. Reading, watching or hearing something does not automatically make it true. We need the ability to verify information, understand its context, recognise its purpose and only then form an opinion. In the digital age, this ability has become one of the most important forms of wisdom. Social media has transformed the way information travels. WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and other platforms have made communication faster, wider and more accessible. But the same speed that connects society can also overwhelm it. Information often reaches us before facts do. A headline is read before the full story. A short video is watched without knowing what happened before or after it. A photograph is circulated without its original context. A message arrives with the familiar words, “Forwarded as received,” and within minutes it may reach thousands of people. By the time the truth catches up, the rumour may already have done its work. The problem becomes even more serious when misinformation is deliberately created and circulated. Rumours may be planted not merely to mislead individuals but to divert public attention from an important issue, create suspicion, damage someone's reputation or push society towards a particular narrative. A distraction does not always need to be completely false. Sometimes a small piece of truth is mixed with exaggeration, selective facts or emotional language. The result can be more powerful than an outright lie because it appears believable. This is how narratives are manufactured. Social media platforms can become powerful tools in this process. A repeated claim begins to look familiar, and familiarity is often mistaken for truth. A provocative post attracts attention. Thousands of reactions create the impression that “everyone” believes it. One emotional video triggers another, comments intensify the mood, and before facts have an opportunity to speak, public sentiment may have already shifted. This is where mob psychology enters the picture. A society can move from calm to anger, suspicion to trust, or optimism to fear with surprising speed. People who would ordinarily think carefully may react differently when they see thousands of others expressing outrage, fear or hostility. The individual begins to follow the crowd, and the crowd begins to reinforce the individual. The danger is not limited to negative emotions. The same mechanism can also be used positively-to mobilise people for social causes, humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, public awareness and community action. Technology itself is neither wise nor foolish. Its impact depends on how information is created, amplified and consumed. The greatest danger, therefore, is not that we have too much information. It is that we may lose the habit of thinking while consuming it. We are increasingly becoming consumers of information rather than creators of thought. Everyone has access to information today, but access does not necessarily mean understanding. The boundaries between a rumour and a report, an opinion and a fact, popularity and truth are becoming increasingly blurred. A post does not become true because thousands of people have liked it. A video does not become evidence merely because it has gone viral. An opinion does not become a fact because it is expressed confidently. An idea does not become correct simply because it confirms what we already believe. This last point deserves particular attention. We often accept information not because it is accurate, but because it is comfortable. We are naturally attracted to information that confirms our existing beliefs and suspicious of information that challenges them. In the digital world, this tendency can be amplified by algorithms that repeatedly expose us to content similar to what we have already watched, liked or shared. Gradually, we may find ourselves living inside an information bubble where we hear many voices-but mostly voices that agree with us. That is not diversity of information. It is an illusion of certainty. Discernment does not mean doubting everything. It means thinking before believing. It means asking simple but powerful questions: Who is saying this? What is the evidence? What is the context? What may be missing? Who benefits if I believe it? And have I heard the other side? These questions may take only a few seconds, but they can prevent hours, days or even years of misunderstanding. This responsibility is particularly important for the younger generation. Children today are growing up in an environment of unprecedented information exposure. They can encounter more information in a few hours than earlier generations might have encountered in weeks. Therefore, education cannot merely teach students how to collect, remember and reproduce information. It must teach them how to question, verify, analyse and interpret it. A student who can write the correct answer in an examination may be academically successful. But a student who knows how to ask the right question is better prepared for life. The classroom of the future must therefore produce not merely informed students, but thinking citizens. They must learn that forwarding a message is also a form of responsibility. Sharing a post is not an innocent act when it can affect someone's reputation, create public fear or influence social behaviour. The challenge becomes even greater in the age of Artificial Intelligence. AI can generate information, images, audio and video with extraordinary speed and sophistication. The distinction between what is real and what merely appears real may become increasingly difficult. In such a world, human judgment becomes more valuable, not less. Technology can produce an answer in seconds. It cannot automatically tell us whether that answer deserves our trust. Some answers require experience. Some require context. Many require the ability to think independently. We have more information, more technology and more connectivity than any previous generation. Yet our real challenge is to preserve something technology cannot manufacture for us: the capacity to think for ourselves. The ocean of information will only become larger. The question will no longer be, “How much information do we have?” The more important questions will be: What should we accept? What should we question? What should we verify? And what should we reject? No technology can completely answer these questions for us. No number of likes can substitute for evidence. No viral trend can replace judgment. No majority can turn misinformation into truth. That responsibility belongs to human beings. Information can tell us what happened. Discernment helps us understand what it means, why it happened, what may be missing from the story and how we should respond. Perhaps, therefore, the greatest educational challenge of our time is not to teach people how to find more information. They already know how to do that. The greater challenge is to teach them how to pause-to pause before believing, to pause before reacting, to pause before forwarding and to pause before joining the crowd. Because sometimes the most intelligent response to information is not an immediate reaction, but a moment of reflection. The ocean is already around us. It is growing deeper every day. What we need now is not more information to swim through it-but the wisdom to know which direction to take. (The writer is the Principal of Podar International School, Ausa, Latur. Views personal.)

A Series On Marital Rape

Writer: Shoma A. Chatterji
Shoma A. Chatterji
Apr 18
4 min read

Sadly, marital rape is not a punishable crime in India. More than half of the world’s countries do not criminalise sexual assault in marriage, including OECD countries like the Czech Republic and Japan. But is marriage the right solution even at a suggestive stage in countries like India  where domestic violence on wives by husbands is very high? Many such violent acts are directly linked to violent rape never mind whether the wife is willing or not, whether the wife is battered as a result of the act or not.

 

Within this ambience where socially sanctioned “virginity tests” are practiced on young brides following the nuptial night, a series like Chiraiya comes like a tight slap on the faces of a predominantly patriarchal society of OTT producers, writers, directors and actors on the one hand and  the audience on the other.

 

But it is a promise made by the male director Sashant Shah who backs out of his own promise halfway through the film. Sadly, the film is focused on Kamlesh (Divya Dutta), the elder daughter-in-law of a conventional joint family who lives with her erudite father-in-law Sukumar Bhramar (Sanjay Mishra), husband (Faisal Rashid), mother-in-law, brother-in-law Arun (Siddharth Shaw) and a confused daughter. The family also has Bhramar’s old mother who does not speak, her long sermon reserved for a long lecture towards the climax. Sadly, because it is Pooja, the brand new second bahu of the family who steps in the family as Arun’s new bride.

 

Marriage Rituals

In a country like India, marital rape is directly connected among Hindu marriage rituals where girls are conditioned to and have internalised the very practice as initiation into the loss of virginity sanctioned by marriage solely by the husband. Thus, young brides actually look forward to the suhaag raat following the wedding as their loss of virginity is through the very men they are married to. Words like “consent” do not exist in the marital dictionary of most Indian girls. Strange that It never occurs to society to question the virginity of the bridegroom.

 

Chiraiya weaves a very melodramatic series in six parts in which Pooja, the brand new second daughter-in-law, expresses vehement anger when her brand new husband Arun, rapes her brutally on the wedding night. She feels insulted, humiliated and brutalized because her husband forced himself on her without her consent. When she complains to Kamlesh, the elder daughter-in-law is stunned and retorts that this is the wife’s dharma and no one questions this within a marriage! Pooja remains adamant. The rape continues for six days when the couple go on a honeymoon till on the final day, Pooja slits herself with a blade and is hospitalized. No one backs her but looking at the damage done to her, Kamlesh slowly realizes the cause of Pooja’s hurt.

 

Another Story

After this very courageous opening, the series wanders away to tell another story of the two sisters-in-law forced to walk out of the family home as they are protesting against an accepted “custom” and bringing scandal to the entire family. But there is no law against marital rape so Kamlesh’s  uncle (Tinnu Anand) who is an attorney and lives in Benaras, tries to help them out through a trumped up dowry charge. But the ever faithful Kamlesh gives the game away and her in-laws free themselves through anticipatory bail. Unable to fight anymore without much backing, the two women return to the home that cast them out and the film closes with an apology by the husband, Arun! The mute grand lady suddenly opens her mouth to deliver a long speech against the conditioning of women by patriarchy though what Pooja does with her marriage remains unexplained.

 

What does real damage to this six-part web series is that it does not carry its courage to a triumphant solution to the issue of marital rape. The series is set somewhere in Rajasthan. Is this because this state is nationally known as a strong upholder of patriarchy? Or, does Rajasthan become a ‘target’ which might change its patriarchal views through this series? Or, rather, its visual beauty?

 

Positive Message

The series is painted in loud, vibrant colours. Though this does nothing to send a positive message against marital rape, it underlines the coarseness in marital rape by cinematographing the rape scenes in too loud strokes. Subtlety and restraint are qualities the makers either do not believe in or do not understand which gives the entire series take on a much more glamorous look than called for. What really raises the film in terms of quality lies in the sterling performances of Divya Dutta as Kamlesh with her confusion, her vulnerability and her strict conviction about a woman’s duties towards the husband, Sarita Joshi as the grandmother-in-law who finally opens her mouth and Tinnu Anand in a wonderful cameo.

 

Chiraiya, which means pigeon, is not the right title because it implies, perhaps, the pigeon’s freedom to fly, as, when, where and why which Kamlesh, Pooja and the other women in the story lack. But the producer-director and entire team deserve a soft pat on the back for thinking out of the box while remaining firmly ensconced inside it.

 

(The writer is a noted film scholar. Views personal.)

Comments

bottom of page