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.)

Mere Illusion or a Battle for Survival?

Writer: Akhilesh Sinha
Akhilesh Sinha
Oct 8, 2025
4 min read

The Congress’ ‘Sangathan Srijan Abhiyaan’ in Jharkhand seeks to rebuild its base and assert independence from its allies, but the party continues to be plagued by deep-rooted factionalism and a fundamental public disconnect.

Last month, the Congress Party in Jharkhand launched with great fanfare the ‘SangathanSrijanAbhiyaan.’ It was projected as a turning point in rebuilding the grand old party’s fortunes in the Eastern Indian state. The message being sent out by the Congress through this vigorous organizational overhaul drive is that it will no longer remain in anyone’s shadow, nor will it depend on its allies for its political survival. The party wants to signal that it will emerge as an independent and powerful political force in the future.


Yet, the million-dollar question that remains is whether the Congress can overcome its perennial malaise of decrepit organization, old factional feuds, an opportunistic leadership and a fundamental disconnect from the public? Will these structural flaws turn this campaign into yet another exercise in noise making rather than any

genuine transformation?


No magic formula

To begin with, the Congress’ plan certainly appears ambitious on paper. From district committees to booth workers, the party wants to energize its outfit at every level, including blocks, panchayats and the grassroots. But are Congress leaders and workers truly ready to struggle and sweat it out to achieve this? Will this grand brainstorming session be reduced to mere rhetoric in an air-conditioned hall?


The party has set itself a bold goal of establishing a functional presence at the grassroots level within 90 days. The obvious question that arises is whether the Congress really possess the magic formula to suddenly activate workers in what has largely been a moribund outfit in Jharkhand. Organizational work requires consistency, time, tireless effort and constant contact with the electorate. The point is just how will the Congress shake itself out of the inertia that has kept it on the margins of Jharkhand’s politics for years in a mere 90 days.


The Congress’s biggest announcement in this campaign is its pledge to put social justice at the heart of its organizational renewal. By promising greater representation for Scheduled Tribes, Scheduled Castes, and Other Backward Classes, the party seeks to project itself as an inclusive alternative.


As noble as this sounds, it is steeped in familiar clichés. It also raises an uncomfortable question: is this truly a bold reimagining of representation, or merely the same electoral arithmetic that every party performs before an election only to abandon once the votes are counted?


Congress insists that it is dismantling the strongholds of nepotism and factionalism to make room for new faces. Yet history tells a different story. Every reshuffle in the party has ultimately meant little more than the promotion of a new protégé from the same family or faction. Why, then, should the public believe that this campaign is any different?


Competition or Illusion?

In Jharkhand, the BJP’s organizational machinery runs deep. Under the disciplined command structure of Narendra Modi and Amit Shah, it has built a booth-level apparatus that stands as both a challenge and an intimidation to weaker, loosely bound rivals like the Congress. The Congress claims to be evolving into a parallel force. Yet on the ground, voters hardly see it as a credible alternative in the state’s anti-BJP space.


This raises a critical question: is the Congress’s campaign genuinely aimed at taking on the BJP head-on, or is it merely seeking leverage through allies such as the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM)? Unless it learns to operate outside the shadow of its partners, the slogan of becoming ‘self-reliant’ will ring hollow and will ultimately turn into little more than an exercise in self-deception.


No matter how expansive the campaign rhetoric, public concerns remain unchanged. Jharkhand’s youth are struggling with chronic unemployment. The exploitation of labour in the mining belt continues unchecked. Indigenous communities face displacement and forced migration. Women and other marginalised groups remain unheard.


How forcefully has the Congress confronted these realities? Will its so-called organizational drive remain confined to internal meetings, caste balancing and appointments? Or will it extend beyond that, into grassroots struggles, mass mobilisations and genuine engagement with the people? Without introspection and sincerity, this effort risks appearing as just another political spectacle.


Congress has declared 2025 as the year of its organizational renewal in Jharkhand. In truth, this is a battle for the party’s very survival in Jharkhand. With every passing year, the Congress slips further into irrelevance. If it fails to reinvent itself meaningfully this time, this could well be its last chance in the state to pose as a credible alternative.


It seems almost axiomatic to say that history is unkind to parties that lose touch with the people’s pulse. The Congress in Jharkhand has two paths to carry on its future course. It can either use this campaign to genuinely reconnect with the state’s deep and unresolved anxieties or it can fade into history as another failed experiment in revival.


Comments

bottom of page