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...

min read

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.)

Caste Calculus, Redux

Abhijit Joshi

Mar 6

4 min read

Maharashtra’s Rajya Sabha nominations reveal the BJP’s adroit caste arithmetic.

Maharashtra's politics has always been a delicate exercise in caste arithmetic. Few strategies illustrate this better than the art of 'social engineering' or the deliberate weaving together of caste and community alliances to produce electoral success. In recent years, that craft appeared to have faded from prominence. Yet the latest Rajya Sabha nominations from Maharashtra suggest that it has returned in force, with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) once again seizing the initiative.

Canny Strategy

Social engineering gained prominence during the political experiments of Mayawati, the formidable leader of the Bahujan Samaj Party in Uttar Pradesh. During her tenure as Chief Minister, Mayawati crafted a striking electoral formula by bringing together Dalits, her traditional base, with sections of the upper castes. It was an improbable alliance that defied conventional caste antagonisms but proved remarkably effective at the ballot box. The strategy reshaped the political grammar of India’s most populous state and briefly made the BSP a formidable national force.

Over time, however, the formula lost its potency. Internal factionalism, shifting political loyalties and the rise of new parties eroded the BSP’s once formidable coalition. Yet while the experiment waned in Uttar Pradesh, the broader principle survived. The BJP, often caricatured by critics as a party of upper-caste interests, gradually refined its own version of social engineering across India. As it expanded beyond its traditional strongholds, the party sought to incorporate leaders and communities from across the social spectrum. The approach combined ideological coherence with pragmatic inclusion.

The latest political manoeuvres in Maharashtra offer a revealing example of this strategy. The BJP’s nominations to the Rajya Sabha were not merely routine exercises in parliamentary arithmetic. With its comfortable strength in the state assembly, the party could easily ensure the victory of its nominees. Yet the choices themselves suggest a broader political calculation.

The party nominated a slate of candidates that reflected a carefully calibrated social balance: Vinod Tawde from the influential Maratha community; Ramdas Athawale, a prominent Dalit leader; Maya Chintaman Ivnate representing tribal communities; and Ramrao Wadkute from the Dhangar community, the politically significant pastoral caste in Maharashtra. Individually, none of these nominations was particularly surprising. Collectively, they form a mosaic that reflects the BJP’s attempt to broaden its social appeal across multiple constituencies.

Potent Symbolism

Symbolism, in Indian politics, can be as potent as electoral victory itself. The re-nomination of Ramdas Athawale, leader of the Republican Party of India (Athawale faction), illustrates this point. Athawale’s influence among Dalit voters may not match that of more prominent Dalit figures elsewhere in India. Yet his continued presence within the BJP-led alliance serves as a reminder of the party’s efforts to retain Dalit representation within its political fold. In a country where caste identities remain deeply embedded in social life, such signals matter.

The representation of tribal and Dhangar communities through Maya Ivnate and Ramrao Wadkute carries similar implications. Tribal groups have long voiced concerns about their political marginalisation, and the BJP has increasingly sought to cultivate support among them across India. By promoting leaders from these communities to national office, the party not only addresses grievances about representation but also strengthens its claim to speak for a broader cross-section of society.

Yet it is the nomination of Vinod Tawde that has attracted the most intrigue in Maharashtra’s political circles. Tawde is no ordinary politician. A veteran associated with both the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, he once occupied a prominent position in the state’s BJP establishment. During the party’s first term leading the Maharashtra government, he served as the state’s education minister.

His political trajectory, however, has been anything but straightforward. Tawde’s ministerial career was cut short after controversy erupted over his educational credentials. Though the episode never entirely defined him, it coincided with a noticeable shift in his political fortunes. Gradually, he moved away from frontline state politics and instead began working within the organisational machinery of the BJP at the national level.

That detour proved unexpectedly fruitful. Over the years Tawde established himself as a capable political strategist, playing a role in managing election campaigns in states such as Bihar and even in municipal contests like those in Chandigarh. His reputation within the BJP’s central leadership steadily grew. Recently he was appointed as an observer for the party’s preparations in Kerala, a state where the BJP continues to seek a political breakthrough.

His return to Parliament through the Rajya Sabha therefore marks something of a political rehabilitation. But it may also serve a more subtle purpose. As a Maratha leader with longstanding organisational links, Tawde’s presence in the upper house provides him with renewed influence in both national and Maharashtra politics. In a state where Maratha identity plays an important role in political mobilisation, such positioning could carry significant implications for the internal balance of power within the BJP.

For the party’s dominant leader in Maharashtra, Devendra Fadnavis, the move introduces an additional layer of political complexity. There is no open rift within the state unit. Yet politics rarely operates without currents beneath the surface. The elevation of a leader like Tawde,once seen as a rival within the party’s internal hierarchy, could provide alternative centres of influence for those seeking a different power equation within the BJP.

If the BJP appears to have executed its strategy with clarity, the opposition alliance in Maharashtra is still adjusting to its own shifting dynamics. The Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA), comprising the Congress, the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray faction) and the Nationalist Congress Party led by Sharad Pawar, has opted to allocate its Rajya Sabha berth to Pawar’s faction.

For Sharad Pawar, one of India’s most seasoned political operators, the move carries obvious advantages. The recent split within the Nationalist Congress Party has altered Maharashtra’s political landscape. A seat in the Rajya Sabha would provide Pawar with a national platform and reinforce his authority over the remaining NCP faction.

Yet the decision was not entirely free of friction. Within the Shiv Sena (UBT), some leaders reportedly favoured alternative nominees. Ultimately the coalition settled on Pawar, reportedly with the mediation of senior leader Sanjay Raut. As his own Rajya Sabha term approaches its end, maintaining cordial ties across the alliance may prove crucial for Raut as well.

By constructing a carefully balanced slate of candidates, the BJP has signalled inclusiveness while quietly reinforcing its organisational interests.

(The writer is a political observer. Views personal.)

A Drought of Wisdom in an Ocean of Information

Caste Calculus, Redux

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