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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.)

Before You Scale the Business, Fix the People Story

Writer: Rahul Kulkarni
Rahul Kulkarni
Dec 28, 2025
3 min read

Most businesses don’t stall because of strategy or capital. They stall because the people story quietly breaks before the growth story begins.

Every Indian SME founder knows this moment. Orders are coming in. Customers want more. The market feels ready. And yet, something inside the organization feels… off. Meetings take longer. Decisions get reworked quietly. Good people seem tired, not lazy. Managers appear busy, but outcomes feel thinner. Nothing is technically broken. But momentum feels fragile.


Over the few quarters, while working closely with growing Indian businesses, founders, second-generation owners, leadership teams, one pattern has shown up again and again: Growth doesn’t derail because leaders make bad decisions. It derails because people dynamics change faster than leaders notice. Before scaling begins, there is always a people story unfolding underneath.


Like Families

Most Indian SMEs start as families … literally or emotionally. Early employees grow with the founder. Roles are fluid. Trust is personal. Everyone “figures it out together.” But growth changes the social contract.


Suddenly, the salesperson becomes a manager. A peer becomes a boss. The founder steps back or tries to and the team doesn’t quite know how to relate anymore. People don’t resist change. They resist unclear change. When roles evolve faster than capability, confidence quietly erodes. Managers hesitate. Team members second-guess authority. What once felt like closeness now feels awkward. This is not failure. It’s a transition most businesses underestimate.


The Gap

Founders speak in vision. Teams hear consequences. A town hall about “new direction” feels energising to leadership — but unsettling to employees who are trying to decode what it means for deadlines, targets, and job security. People nod. They clap. And then they return to their desks with five interpretations of the same message.


Soon, employees spend more energy interpreting leadership than executing work. This is where alignment quietly dies … not in conflict, but in confusion.


Like Favouritism

Ask most founders if they reward merit, and they will say yes … honestly. Ask teams the same question, and you’ll often hear a pause. Who gets access easily? Whose mistakes get forgiven? Whose opinions carry weight without explanation? When criteria remain invisible, teams stop competing on performance and start competing on proximity. This doesn’t create rebellion. It creates silence.


People play safe. High performers disengage quietly. Politics replaces ownership. Favouritism is rarely intentional but perception does the damage anyway.


The Pace

Many founders succeed because they move fast. Decisions are quick. Energy is high. Urgency is default. But what feels natural to a founder often feels overwhelming to a team. When everything is urgent, nothing is thoughtful. When speed becomes identity, reflection disappears. Over time, teams stop thinking ahead and start reacting.


Creativity becomes shallow. Initiative becomes risky. The business becomes good at firefighting and bad at building. Ironically, the very pace that enabled early growth begins to limit the next phase.


Kindness Control

Modern micromanagement doesn’t look harsh. It looks caring. “Just loop me in.” “I’ll quickly review.” “Stay reachable.” But when every decision feels provisional, autonomy evaporates. People don’t relax on leave. Managers don’t fully own outcomes. Teams stay mentally “on” … even when they’re off. The cost isn’t workload. It’s psychological fatigue. And tired teams don’t scale.


Invisible Power

Every growing business has two structures. The org chart — and the real influence map. Long-time loyalists. Trusted insiders. External advisors. Family voices. Star performers. When unofficial influence overrides formal roles, clarity collapses. People don’t know who to listen to. Managers lose authority. Decisions feel unstable. Systems don’t break loudly. They bend quietly.


Growth Begins

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: Most growth derailers are not operational. They are emotional and behavioural. Before you add headcount, ask: Are roles clear and respected? Is trust visible or assumed? Does speed allow thinking? Are boundaries stable? Is authority aligned with accountability? Growth doesn’t demand perfection. It demands awareness.


Forward Look

Fixing the people story doesn’t require dramatic interventions. It starts with slowing down to observe. With naming what feels off. With building clarity before adding complexity. The strongest businesses I’ve seen didn’t scale because they pushed harder. They scaled because they repaired trust, reset roles, and redesigned leadership behaviour before growth forced the issue.


Before you scale the business fix the people story. Everything else follows.


(The writer is Co-founder at PPS Consulting. He helps growth-stage leaders design systems where people and performance evolve together. Views personal.)

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