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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.)

Local Votes, Larger Reckonings

Writer: Abhijit Joshi
Abhijit Joshi
Dec 19, 2025
4 min read

The eagerly-anticipated municipal elections in Maharashtra will decide which parties truly own urban India’s second-most powerful state.

The forthcoming municipal elections in Maharashtra, covering 29 municipal corporations, are officially exercises in local self-government. In practice, they are something closer to a mid-term audit of the State’s political balance. From Mumbai to Pune, Nagpur to Nashik, Sambhajinagar to Kolhapur, these contests will test which parties command genuine urban support and which survive mainly on alliances, symbolism or inertia.


Municipal elections matter precisely because they are small. They are fought ward by ward, lane by lane, complaint by complaint. Unlike assembly or parliamentary polls, they reward visibility over rhetoric and delivery over ideology. Roads that cave in after the monsoon, water taps that run dry by noon, garbage piles that outlast election posters are the metrics by which corporators are judged. Urban voters, particularly the middle class, are unforgiving. They pay taxes, queue for permissions and sit in traffic; civic failure is not an abstraction but a daily irritation. That is why municipal polls so often unsettle grand political calculations.


Nowhere is this more evident than in Mumbai. Control of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), one of Asia’s richest civic bodies, has long been a proxy for political dominance in Maharashtra. The BJP, allied with Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena, sees the BMC as both a prize and a proof point: a chance to consolidate power in India’s financial capital and demonstrate that its urban ascent is durable. For the Shinde faction, Mumbai is existential. It must show that it has inherited not just the party name but the Shiv Sena’s organisational muscle and voter loyalty.


Yet the arithmetic has been complicated by the tentative reunion of estranged cousins. The understanding between Uddhav Thackeray and Raj Thackeray has injected emotion into what was shaping up as a managerial contest.


For voters nostalgic about the older, more culturally assertive Shiv Sena, the optics are powerful. But sentiment alone rarely wins ward elections. Coordination, candidate selection and booth-level discipline will determine whether this rapprochement translates into votes. Congress’s decision to contest independently in Mumbai further muddies the waters, potentially fragmenting opposition support and quietly aiding the BJP-led alliance. Had the Thackeray brothers reconciled earlier, the shockwaves would have been greater. As it stands, the reunion is meaningful but not yet decisive.


Urban Aspirations

Pune tells a different story. A fast-growing, middle-class-heavy city, it is impatient with excuses. Traffic congestion, erratic water supply, weak public transport and haphazard development dominate civic conversations. The BJP has built a formidable base here and will seek to defend it, but discontent with planning failures and internal leadership rivalries could prove costly. Opposition parties hope that anger over infrastructure will convert into ballots, though dissatisfaction does not always find an electoral outlet.


The simmering question is whether Sharad Pawar and Ajit Pawar will eventually align. They tend to unite when power beckons, but Sharad Pawar’s political timing is famously inscrutable. The rivalry between figures such as Murlidhar Mohol and Ravindra Dhangekar adds another layer of risk for the ruling alliance.


Nagpur carries symbolism disproportionate to its size. Home to Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and Union minister Nitin Gadkari, it is expected to showcase the dividends of political prominence. Voters will judge whether that prominence has delivered better roads, reliable water and thoughtful expansion. A strong showing would reinforce the BJP’s governance narrative; signs of fatigue would echo across the state. Nagpur’s politics has turned before, often when confidence shaded into complacency. Caste equations remain influential, making candidate choice as important as party brand.


In Nashik, complexity reigns. The city sits at the intersection of rapid urbanisation, religious tourism and an agriculture-linked economy. Civic issues have kept leaders under scrutiny. Alliances are fluid and local heavyweights matter.


The forthcoming Simhastha Kumbh Mela and the controversy over tree-felling at Tapovan have tested the BJP’s credibility. Delayed communication and reactive decision-making have not helped. Unless the chief minister intervenes decisively, winning Nashik’s corporation could remain elusive for the ruling party.


Sambhajinagar reflects Maharashtra’s layered politics: identity, aspiration and impatience entwined. Frequent political shifts signal voter frustration with promises unmet. Employment, industrial growth and infrastructure dominate middle-class concerns. Symbolism alone will not suffice. The BJP’s local organisation appears weaker here, potentially giving the Shinde camp an edge. An overly aggressive approach by the BJP could backfire, especially with the Uddhav Thackeray faction and the MNS poised to exploit gaps.


Kolhapur, by contrast, underscores the enduring power of local leadership. Flood control, urban amenities and agriculture-linked support systems shape voter preferences. National parties struggle if they fail to adapt their narratives to local realities. Individual credibility often outweighs party labels, making candidate selection crucial. While the BJP and the Shinde-led Sena see an opening amid civic underperformance, Congress and Ajit Pawar’s group remain formidable. For Congress leader Satej Patil, the contest is a direct test of political heft.


Across Maharashtra, the BJP–Shinde alliance remains the dominant pole, but seat-sharing disputes and local ambitions threaten cohesion. The Thackeray cousins’ cooperation could reshape contests in select cities if discipline holds. Congress’s solo run adds volatility, especially where margins are thin.


For urban voters, these elections are an opportunity to influence governance where it touches daily life. Corporators who answer calls, navigate bureaucracy and deliver incremental improvements often matter more than lofty manifestos. The municipal verdicts will therefore measure not just political strategy but public patience.


When the ballots are counted, they will do more than populate city councils. They will reveal which parties have invested in local leadership and which have mistaken alliances and slogans for organisation. In Maharashtra, the road to power still runs through the city street.


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

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