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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.)

Abhishek Sharma: The Fireworks Are Back

Writer: Waleed Hussain
Waleed Hussain
4 hours ago
3 min read

Somewhere in the dusty corridors of cricket history, a lonely footnote just sat up and demanded a raise. Abhishek Sharma, the left-handed wrecking ball from Punjab, has returned to form with the subtlety of a firework display in a library. One moment he was enduring the kind of lean patch that makes even your most loyal aunt start muttering about “maybe trying a different grip,” and the next he was turning Afghanistan’s bowlers into unwilling extras in a highlight reel that belongs in a museum of modern violence.


The climax arrived on a Thursday night in Delhi that was supposed to be a dead rubber. Afghanistan had already been politely but firmly shown the door in the series. The crowd was there more out of habit than hope. Then Abhishek walked out and decided the evening needed a plot twist.


Thirty balls later he had a hundred. Not a careful, graft-your-way-there hundred. A 30-ball hundred. The fastest by an Indian in T20 internationals, the fastest by anyone from a full-member nation against another full-member nation. Nine fours, eleven sixes, and a celebration that involved sitting cross-legged in a meditation pose as if he had just finished a particularly satisfying yoga class rather than dismantling an international attack.


The numbers are almost rude. Strike rate north of 300. Afghanistan’s total in reply: 94. Margin of victory: 127 runs. Player of the Match. Player of the Series. Somewhere, Rohit Sharma’s old 35-ball record against Sri Lanka is quietly requesting a transfer to a less competitive league.


What makes the whole thing funnier is the timing. Abhishek had arrived at this series with the kind of recent form that invites unsolicited advice from strangers on social media.


There had been the England tour, the Ireland misadventure, the occasional nine-innings stretch without a fifty that had the pundits clearing their throats. Form, in cricket, is a mysterious and slightly vindictive force.


It leaves without warning, stays away longer than it should, and then returns wearing a cape and asking if anyone missed it. Abhishek simply refused to panic. He kept talking about process, about playing like “Soormas,” about not letting one or two bad series define the batting group. Then he went out and scored 229 runs in three matches at a strike rate that would make a calculator blush.


There is something almost comic about the way he does it. Other batters sweat and grit their teeth and talk about “taking the game deep.” Abhishek treats the first six overs like a personal invitation to rearrange the furniture.


He doesn’t so much play shots as issue eviction notices to the ball. The bowler runs in with hope; the ball leaves the bat with a sense of urgency and a one-way ticket into the stands. By the time the fielding side has adjusted the field, he has already adjusted the scoreboard beyond recognition.


Sensible Friend

His opening partner Sanju Samson had the good sense to make a fifty of his own and largely stay out of the way, which is the cricket equivalent of being the sensible friend who drives the getaway car while the other one sets the building on fire. The rest of the Indian batting order came and went with the polite efficiency of people who know the main act has already finished the show. Afghanistan’s bowlers, to their credit, kept running in. They just ran in looking increasingly like men who had been told the fire extinguisher was full of glitter.


The humour, of course, sits in the contrast. Cricket loves a redemption story, but it prefers them with a bit of struggle and soul-searching. Abhishek’s version skips the montage of lonely nets and late-night doubts and goes straight to the part where the hero casually rewrites the record books while looking mildly surprised that anyone is still talking about the earlier lean patch.


“One or two bad series won’t define us,” he said afterwards, which is the sort of line that sounds humble until you realise he has just scored a 30-ball hundred and the opposition has been reduced to 94.


What comes next is the usual cricket question: can he keep it going? Form is a fair-weather friend, and the next series will bring new bowlers with new plans and the same old hope that this time the left-hander might, for once, play a quite little thirty. History suggests those hopes are optimistic.


(The writer is a senior journalist based in Mumbai.)

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