top of page

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.)

How India’s Measured Drone Response Sets It Apart from Global Powers

Writer: Shoumojit Banerjee
Shoumojit Banerjee
May 10, 2025
5 min read

In contrast to American overreach or Russian brute force, India’s restraint in dealing with Pakistan after the Pahalgam provocation sets a new paradigm in modern warfare.

While India and Pakistan have stepped back from the brink following the announcement of a ceasefire brokered by the United States, Operation Sindoor nonetheless marks a turning point in South Asia’s security calculus, with India combining precision (in its deployment of drones, loitering munitions and ballistic missiles) with principle and showing remarkable restraint in its operations.


Operation Sindoor had been initiated by the Indian Armed Forces on May 7, targeting terrorist infrastructure deep within Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir as a direct response to the brutal massacre of 26 Indian tourists by Pakistan-sponsored terrorists in Kashmir’s Pahalgam on April 22.


Pakistan’s immediate retaliation, dubbed ‘Operation Bunyan-ul-Marsoos,’ had involved drone and missile strikes not just on Indian military targets but civilian facilities as well. It resulted in the killing of several persons, including children.


Throughout this fierce skirmish which had threatened to escalate to a full-blown war, India’s use of unmanned systems stood in stark contrast to Pakistan’s persistent flirtation with asymmetric escalation. India’s measured approach also contrasted sharply with the more aggressive postures observed in other global conflicts.


Drones are not new to the subcontinent. Pakistan has long used rudimentary drones to aid insurgents across the LoC. India, meanwhile, has spent the last decade quietly modernising its UAV capacity by buying Herons from Israel, acquiring U.S.-made MQ-9 Reapers and investing in indigenous systems like the Rustom and Tapas.


Operation Sindoor marked the first time these assets were deployed in tandem with ballistic missile batteries and satellite-guided munitions in a punitive but proportionate response.


At a time when many nations have embraced drones as tools of unchecked force, India’s decision to strike only military targets, despite the provocation of civilian deaths, is exceptional.


The United States, often seen as a pioneer in drone warfare, offers a cautionary counterpoint. Between 2004 and 2016, American drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia killed thousands, many of them civilians. Security scholar Hugh Gusterson had warned that “drones make possible perpetual war without costs.”


The U.S. learned this painfully as its drones radicalised more than they neutralised, sowing deep resentment in tribal regions from Waziristan to Aleppo.


India, in contrast, has opted for a model of accountability and deterrence. Even as it developed offensive drone capabilities, it resisted their use in the wake of the 2016 Uri attacks and the 2019 Pulwama bombing. The 2019 Balakot airstrikes, carried out by manned aircraft, were a message of intent but not escalation. The same logic applied to Operation Sindoor with drones were being used in a precise manner to defang Pakistan’s ability to inflict further harm.


Historical Precedents

To understand this approach, it helps to consider history. The India-Pakistan rivalry is unlike any other in the world: two nuclear-armed states with unresolved territorial disputes, multiple wars behind them and vastly divergent civil-military equations. Pakistan’s military establishment, which dominates its polity, has long seen terrorism as a force multiplier. India, by contrast, remains a democracy with civilian supremacy over the military. Its doctrine emphasizes deterrence, not dominance.


During the Kargil War in 1999, India refused to cross the LoC despite enormous pressure even as Pakistani troops and militants infiltrated its territory. Again in 2008, after the widespread killing of innocent civilians and several policemen during the Mumbai attacks orchestrated by Lashkar-e-Taiba, India opted for diplomatic isolation and intelligence coordination over military retaliation. Contrast this with Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008 or its annexation of Crimea in 2014.


In recent years, the proliferation of drone technology has lowered the threshold for conflict. Where once only a handful of states could deploy precision munitions from the sky, now even non-state actors can wreak havoc.


In his seminal 2013 work ‘A Theory of the Drone,’ French philosopher Grégoire Chamayou critiques the ethical and strategic implications of drone warfare. He argues that drones enable a form of warfare without combat where the operator is insulated from risk, leading to a “principle of immunity for the imperial combatant.” This detachment can erode traditional just war principles, as the act of killing becomes a remote, almost administrative task. This “necroethics” as he terms it, raises profound questions about the morality of state-sanctioned assassinations and the erosion of combatant equality.


Chamayou’s work, as all major books on drone warfare, were primarily motivated by the civilian casualties of America’s ‘War on Terror.’ In contrast, India’s measured approach against Pakistan has aligned with a commitment to uphold ethical standards in warfare and resisting the drift towards the impersonal and risk-free model of conflict that Chamayou warns against.


Naturally, no such qualms have been forthcoming from the various terror outfits. The Islamic State (ISIS) had used off-the-shelf drones to deadly effect in Mosul. The Houthi rebels in Yemen have targeted Saudi oil facilities with Iranian-made UAVs. In the Caucasus, Azerbaijan’s Turkish Bayraktar drones overwhelmed Armenian defences in Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020, showcasing the asymmetric power of cheap air power.


Pakistan, increasingly reliant on Chinese drones and Turkish advisers, has sought to replicate this model. Its attacks in recent months, particularly on Indian civilian targets, bear the hallmarks of this doctrine: low-cost, high-visibility and plausibly deniable.


This has prompted the Indian calculus to shift from strategic patience to calibrated response. The parallels with Russia and Ukraine are instructive. In the early months of the Ukraine war, Russia’s use of Iranian Shahed drones to attack Kyiv’s infrastructure demonstrated a new playbook: overwhelm enemy air defences with loitering munitions and create psychological terror among civilians. Ukraine responded by innovating rapidly, developing homemade drones and targeting Russian supply depots with long-range UAVs. The skies over Donbas became a laboratory for future war.


While the Russia-Ukraine war has spiralled into total war with massive civilian casualties, India has so far drawn a red line around escalation. The moral clarity of India’s approach, rare in contemporary military strategy, may well be its greatest asset.


Globally, the drone race is accelerating. The U.S., China, Israel, Turkey and Iran dominate production, while dozens of other states are emerging as buyers or second-tier manufacturers. By 2030, the global military drone market is expected to surpass $100 billion. Already, there are over 20,000 drones in military service worldwide in comparison to just a few hundred at the turn of the millennium.


India, traditionally a laggard in aerospace innovation, has been catching up. The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) is developing autonomous swarm drones, while Indian startups are working on AI-integrated loitering munitions and stealth UAVs. The acquisition of 31 MQ-9B Reapers from the U.S., along with the operationalisation of the Kalyani Group’s indigenous weaponised drones, represents a technological leap.


Operation Sindoor may well mark a threshold not just in the India-Pakistan conflict but in how democracies wage war. In an age where machines kill silently and borders blur in cyberspace and sky, India’s decision to strike hard but not indiscriminately has been both moral and strategic. By integrating historical restraint with modern capabilities, India has set a precedent for responsible state behaviour in the era of drone warfare.

Comments

bottom of page