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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.)

Getting the Railways Back on Track

Writer: Amey Chitale
Amey Chitale
Feb 25
4 min read

By folding populist habits into a harder budgetary logic, India’s railways are discovering that reform is less about new trains than about financial realism.

For decades after independence, the Railway Budget, presented separately from the Union Budget, became a theatrical exercise in political generosity, packed with announcements of new trains and pet projects designed to flatter local constituencies. The result was a sprawling system admired for its engineering prowess but crippled by inefficiency and chronically dependent on public funding.


The decision by Narendra Modi’s government to end this annual pageant and merge the railway finances with the Union Budget signalled a philosophical shift from politics to productivity. The railways, long styled as the lifeline of the Indian economy, are now being asked to plan like a business that serves national priorities rather than a patronage machine that serves electoral ones.


The budget cycle for 2026–27 reflects that ambition. Capital outlay is at a record high, and the ministry has launched an unusual initiative titled “52 weeks, 52 reforms,” promising weekly, system-wide improvements in customer service, maintenance and safety. The stated aim is to bring train accidents down to single digits from 11 in 2025–26. Sustainability, too, is now more than a slogan, with commitments to greener passenger systems and cleaner freight operations. Plans for seven high-speed rail corridors, pitched as growth connectors, sit alongside the near-completion of the Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC) network.


The numbers tell a story of both momentum and constraint. Total revenue for 2026–27 is projected at Rs 3.02 lakh crore, an increase of 8.4 percent over the revised estimates of the previous year. Nearly 91 percent of this is expected to come from traffic operations. Passenger revenue is forecast to grow by 9.1 percent and freight by 5.8 percent.


Rising Expenditure

Expenditure, meanwhile, continues to rise remorselessly. Revenue spending is budgeted at Rs 2.99 trillion, up 8.1 percent, while capital expenditure is pegged at Rs 2.93 trillion, a rise of 10.5 percent. About 95 percent of this capital spending is financed by the central government.


Freight remains the backbone of the system. In 2026–27 it is expected to generate Rs 1.89 trillion, or 62 percent of internal earnings, dwarfing passenger services at 29 percent. Between 2017–18 and 2026–27, freight has contributed an average of 68 percent of internal revenue. But it makes the railways acutely sensitive to shifts in freight volumes and margins.


That sensitivity is becoming riskier. Rail’s share of national freight traffic has slipped to about 26–27 percent from 36 percent in 2007–08. The government wants to raise it to 45 percent by 2030 - a heroic target that would require reforms in pricing, reliability and last-mile connectivity. Roads, despite being nearly 50 percent more expensive for comparable loads, continue to lure time-sensitive cargo with their flexibility and speed. Congestion, high tariffs and slow average train speeds have not helped rail’s case.


Coal still accounts for over half of rail freight tonnage, but its long-term decline in power generation forces diversification into automobiles, fast-moving consumer goods and domestic container traffic. The DFCs are a bright spot, delivering faster speeds and higher throughput, supported by ‘Cargo Plus’ hubs designed to cut logistics costs. The proposed East–West DFC, linking mineral-rich eastern India to western markets, could add crucial capacity. Yet mundane constraints such as pilot shortages and congestion on feeder routes threaten to blunt these gains.


Passenger services tell a different, more politically fraught story. Earnings are projected at Rs 87,300 crore in 2026–27, driven by premium air-conditioned services and modern trains such as Vande Bharat. But these glossy offerings sit atop a vast, loss-making base. Non-AC classes make up about 70 percent of the fleet and nearly two-thirds of passenger kilometres, yet Sleeper and General classes together incur losses exceeding Rs 33,000 crore.


The railways’ social service obligation now exceeds Rs 60,000 crore annually, funded almost entirely by freight surpluses. Cheap passenger tickets mean expensive freight tariffs, which in turn push cargo onto roads.


Passenger fares were raised twice in 2025 after a five-year freeze, while freight rates have not been revised since 2018. The Economic Survey for 2025–26 warned that high freight tariffs inflate logistics costs and undermine competitiveness. Rationalising them would not only boost rail’s market share but also help decongest highways and cut carbon emissions.


Non-fare revenue remains an underexploited frontier. It accounts for about 9 percent of earnings, a far cry from the 30 percent common among global peeRs Catering, tourism and digital services via IRCTC are expanding, while the National Monetisation Pipeline 2.0 aims to raise Rs 2.5 trillion through public–private partnerships and asset monetisation. Planned sales of stakes in public-sector units could fetch Rs 80,000 crore, easing borrowing needs and injecting market discipline.


Mounting Challenges

The toughest constraint, however, lies in costs that refuse to bend. Staff salaries and pensions absorb a staggering share of revenue, an average of 71 percent over the past decade. In 2026–27, salaries are projected to take 41 percent of internal revenue and pensions another 25 percent. The approval of the 8th Central Pay Commission in late 2025 looms large. Its predecessor pushed annual expenditure up by Rs 22,000 crore and sent the operating ratio soaring. With little room to raise fares or freight rates, higher staff costs risk squeezing funds for maintenance and investment.


Capital spending has surged but its productivity is under question. The capital output ratio has worsened sharply, suggesting diminishing returns from each rupee invested. High-gestation projects such as high-speed rail and the DFCs, combined with rising construction costs, make project management and inflation control critical.


Debt adds another layer of pressure. Borrowing through the Indian Railway Finance Corporation has pushed outstanding liabilities to a projected Rs 4.3 trillion in 2026–27.


India’s railways thus stand at a crossroads. To support the vision of a ‘Viksit Bharat,’ they must evolve from a subsidised monopoly into a modern, multimodal logistics platform which is commercially sharper yet socially conscious.

(The author is a Chartered Accountant with a leading company in Mumbai. Views personal.)

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