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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 Southern Cauldron

Correspondent
Feb 17, 2025
3 min read

Updated: Feb 18, 2025

As Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and his deputy, DK Shivakumar, vie for supremacy, the Congress in Karnataka finds itself in a precarious balancing act between ambition and unity.

Siddaramaiah
Karnataka

Few states are as emblematic of factional intrigue as Karnataka. Despite the Congress unquestioned superiority in the southern state, the party’s unity is threatened by a fierce power struggle between its two formidable figures: Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and his ambitious deputy, DK Shivakumar.


Despite Shivakumar’s seemingly conciliatory remarks urging party members not to misuse Siddaramaiah’s name or fan media speculation, the undercurrents of discord are unmistakable.


The real message in the latest skirmishing, decoded in the backrooms of Karnataka’s political circles, was one of frustration. Shivakumar, long considered the Congress’s bulwark in the state, was now being forced to navigate a terrain where his own leadership ambitions were being systematically undermined.


The Congress’s resounding victory in the 2023 Karnataka Assembly polls was, in many ways, a poisoned chalice. While Siddaramaiah, the veteran warhorse, was given the top job, Shivakumar was placated with the deputy CM post and the state Congress presidency. The duration of this arrangement, however, was never explicitly laid out. Party insiders claim that there was an implicit two-and-a-half-year timeline before Shivakumar would ascend to the top post. Others insist that Siddaramaiah was chosen for a full five-year term. The ambiguity has proven to be fertile ground for factionalism.


Now, over a year since that power-sharing arrangement was brokered, the uneasy equilibrium is unravelling.


There is more than just personal ambition at play. At its core, the battle is a contest between two vastly different political legacies. Siddaramaiah, a socialist at heart, built his career championing backward castes and minorities. His politics is rooted in the legacy of Devaraj Urs, the last Congress leader to serve two full terms as Karnataka’s chief minister. If Siddaramaiah stays in power for another year, he will surpass Urs.


Shivakumar, in contrast, embodies the Congress’s organizational muscle. A Vokkaliga strongman with an unrivaled network of influence, he played a pivotal role in reviving the party’s fortunes in Karnataka. His backers argue that he deserves to lead, having done the heavy lifting in the 2023 election. More crucially, his support base sees the current attempts to sideline him as a veiled effort to prevent him from staking his claim for the top job in 2028.


Shivakumar, for all his political acumen and deep-rooted influence, faces resistance from within the party’s backward-caste lobby, which sees him as a threat to their long-standing dominance. Siddaramaiah, a leader who built his career on mobilizing backward communities, continues to wield significant influence over these groups, reinforcing the perception that his exit would disrupt the delicate caste equilibrium Congress has cultivated over the years.


Shivakumar’s dilemma is twofold. While he remains the party’s most resourceful troubleshooter, his influence is largely confined to the Vokkaliga community, a powerful but numerically smaller bloc. His elevation to the chief ministership would risk alienating key Congress constituencies, particularly Dalits and OBCs, who form the bedrock of Siddaramaiah’s support.


For now, Siddaramaiah appears to hold the upper hand. His government, despite allegations of corruption in the MUDA scam (linked to land allotments) has remained largely unscathed. This poses a dilemma for Shivakumar, who cannot openly challenge the Chief Minister without risking the perception of disloyalty.


History offers a grim reminder of what happens when Congress’s internal contradictions go unresolved. The last time Karnataka witnessed such a fierce factional war was in the early 2000s, when the conflict between S.M. Krishna and Mallikarjun Kharge ultimately weakened the party’s grip on the state. The Congress risks repeating the same mistake if it fails to decisively address the Siddaramaiah-Shivakumar standoff.


The irony, of course, is that both leaders need each other. Siddaramaiah requires Shivakumar’s organizational muscle to keep the Congress afloat, while Shivakumar needs Siddaramaiah’s mass appeal to sustain his own ambitions.

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