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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.)

BJP’s mega induction drive in Nashik amid local friction

Writer: Abhijit Mulye
Abhijit Mulye
Dec 25, 2025
3 min read

Mumbai: The Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) city office in Nashik turned into a high-stakes political theater on Thursday as the party executed a "mega induction drive" ahead of the crucial Municipal Corporation elections. In a move that signalled both the party's aggressive expansion and rising internal friction, five senior heavyweight leaders from the NCP-SP, Congress, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), and Shiv Sena (UBT) officially crossed over to the saffron fold.


Former Nashik Mayor and Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Vinayak Pande, Former Nashik Mayor from MNS and now Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Adv. Yatin Wagh, former MNS MLA now NCP-SP leader Adv. Nitin Bhosle, former Chairpersons of the Standing Committee of the Corporation Shahu Khaire (Congress) and Sanjay Chavan (SS-UBT) and MNS state secretary Dinkar Patil joined the BJP at Nashik along with their respective supporters and several former corporators on Thursday in presence of irrigation minister Girish Mahajan. Local BJP MLA Devyanhi Pharande, who is also the Municipal Corporation election in charge of the party, had been opposing induction of Adv. Wagh, Khaire and Pande into the party. In a social media post early in the morning, she accused the party leadership of keeping her in dark about the induction drive.


Electric Atmosphere

The atmosphere at the BJP headquarters was electric yet tense as the city witnessed the mega induction drive. Supporters of the incoming leaders arrived with drums and garlands, while a noticeable contingent of BJP "loyalists"—long-time party workers who have spent decades building the local unit—staged protest against the drive even as the police controlled them.


Despite a formal protest and "strong opposition" voiced by these senior loyalists the party high command moved forward with the induction. The "grand drama" peaked as the five leaders were welcomed with traditional turbans and BJP scarves, even as some veteran workers briefly staged a silent demonstration outside the main hall, questioning the "dilution" of the party's core ideology for electoral gains.


Pharande, who is in her third term as the party MLA from the city, had been winning on Hindutva plank from the constituency that has a sizable Muslim population. While some of the leaders inducted today had been winning on the basis of the Muslim vote bank in the city, at least two of them are being seen by Pharande as the prospective contenders for the assembly seat she is currently holding. That also explains why she mentioned that she had been a staunch Hindutva warrior, in her social media post, said a senior party sympathiser. Party insiders also said that she was informer only late in the night about the induction drive and there was no response to her calls to the party leadership, which led to demonstrations.


Goal Of 100

However, the induction ceremony was presided over by Mahajan, often referred to as the party’s "crisis manager." Addressing the packed hall, Mahajan made no apologies for the move, framing it as a clinical necessity for the upcoming civic polls. "This induction is aimed at a spectacular victory in the ensuing elections," Mahajan declared. "With the influence and ground-level support these five leaders bring, I am confident the BJP shall win over 100 of the total 122 seats in the city corporation."


The ambitious target of 100+ seats suggests that the BJP is looking to achieve a near-absolute majority, reducing the opposition to a negligible presence in the Nashik Municipal Corporation.


Recognising the simmering resentment among the rank and file, Mahajan spent a significant portion of his speech addressing the "old guard." He assured the veterans that their sacrifices for the party would not be forgotten despite the arrival of new, high-profile entrants. Mahajan explicitly promised that "injustice won’t be done to the old, senior, loyal party workers." He also urged the cadres to "not worry" and instead focus on the larger goal of total dominance in the corporation.


The exit of these five leaders is a significant blow to the Shiv Sena (UBT) and MNS, both of which have recently announced alliances in other parts of the state to counter the BJP. By poaching talent from these specific camps, the BJP has effectively disrupted the local leadership chain of its rivals just as the election machinery begins to churn.

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