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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.)

One Health, One Future: Why India Must Lead the Way

Dr. Deo Prakash Chaturvedi and Dr. Kishore Paknikar
Sep 11, 2025
4 min read

Integrating human, animal and environmental health offers India a strategic path to resilience and global leadership.

In 2023, two incidents in southern India carried a chilling warning. A two-year-old girl in Andhra Pradesh and a man in Karnataka died of H5N1 bird flu, a rare but lethal zoonotic infection. Around the same time, Kerala reported nearly 200 deaths from leptospirosis after unseasonal rains triggered a surge in rodent-borne transmission. These were not freak events. More than 60 percent of all human infectious diseases originate from animals, and nearly three-quarters of new or emerging infections are traced back to this source. The invisible line separating the health of humans, animals, and the environment is constantly being breached.


Climate change and antimicrobial resistance compound India’s health risks. The WHO warns of 250,000 additional climate-related deaths annually by 2050, while the IPCC forecasts six billion people in dengue-prone zones by 2080. India’s warmer, wetter climate is already extending mosquito seasons and worsening malaria and dengue outbreaks. Melting glaciers may release ancient pathogens. Meanwhile, drug-resistant infections caused 1.27 million deaths globally in 2019, with misuse of antibiotics in healthcare and agriculture driving resistance in India. These intertwined threats all converge under the One Health imperative.


One Health is not just a slogan but a recognition that human, animal, and environmental health are deeply interconnected. It serves as the guiding principle for prevention in the 21st century. The European Union’s EU4Health program has allocated €4.4 billion for surveillance and antimicrobial resistance control. Germany has established a dedicated One Health unit, and the United States launched its first National One Health Framework in 2023. The World Bank’s Pandemic Fund has raised billions, with new pledges at the G20 summit in 2024, including India’s $12 million commitment. The key lesson is that prevention is more effective and less costly than remediation.


India has made some progress in this area. Programs like the PM-Atmanirbhar Swasth Bharat Yojana and the National Health Mission can serve as platforms for incorporating One Health principles. Even a small reallocation of funds could support veterinary laboratories, zoonotic surveillance, and environmental monitoring. Although overall health spending is low at 3.3 percent of GDP, establishing state-level One Health units and inter-departmental teams would not require huge resources. However, budgets alone are not sufficient. India’s strong pharmaceutical, biotech, and agri-tech industries need to be involved, developing rapid diagnostics, veterinary vaccines, and protocols for antibiotic stewardship. Well-designed public–private partnerships can help ensure that innovations are quickly translated from labs to real-world application.


The main obstacle is institutional. Ministries of health, animal husbandry, environment, food safety, and wildlife all have overlapping responsibilities but mostly operate separately. They lack shared budgets, common dashboards, and methods for real-time data exchange. The National Standing Committee on Zoonoses exists, but without legal authority or a dedicated budget, it cannot maintain momentum. Recognizing this, the government held a national consultation in 2024 to explore harmonizing laws across human, animal, and environmental health sectors. It is crucial to align the Epidemic Diseases Act, Livestock Importation Act, and wildlife regulations with outbreak surveillance. A biennial One Health legal review could identify conflicts early before they become crises.


States offer inspiring examples. Karnataka and Kerala have shown that multi-agency responses to Nipah and dengue can be quick and effective. Gujarat’s brucellosis control program serves as another model. Scaling these successes requires establishing State Zoonoses Committees connected to District Task Forces, conducting simulation exercises, and ensuring joint incident reports within 48 hours of outbreaks. Training is just as important. Medical officers, veterinarians, forest staff, environmental officers and community health workers need joint courses in triage, biosafety, digital reporting and outbreak investigation. Expanding India’s disease surveillance system to include animal and environmental indicators, with open data sharing across agencies, could be transformative. Abattoirs, live-bird markets, fisheries, and wastewater systems could all serve as early warning sites for emerging threats.


COVID-19 reduced India’s GDP by 7.3 percent in 2020. Early detection of zoonoses in animals could prevent such shocks and save billions. WHO estimates zoonoses already cost low-income countries one trillion dollars annually in productivity losses, livestock deaths, trade bans, and health expenses. A national One Health investment ledger that tracks avoided costs could attract finance ministries and investors, making resilience a matter not just of science but also of economics.


India is well positioned to lead globally. During its G20 presidency, it promoted the idea of ‘One Earth, One Health’ and helped secure commitments on zoonoses and antimicrobial resistance. The proposed National Institute of One Health in Nagpur can serve as a center for research, training, and regional collaboration. India’s strengths in affordable innovation, from mobile apps to veterinary vaccines, can benefit South Asia and Africa. Its manufacturing capacity can be expanded to serve the Global South. By linking climate finance to health outcomes, India can also demonstrate how fighting deforestation, waste mismanagement, and water insecurity reduces both emissions and disease risks.


The convergence of zoonotic spillover, climate-related illnesses, and antimicrobial resistance is among the greatest challenges of our era. For India, adopting One Health is not optional but a strategic necessity. The launch of NAP 2.0 and the Nagpur Institute represents a historic milestone. If India rises to the occasion, One Health could become not just a national model but a global legacy of foresight and accountability.


(Dr. Deo Prakash Chaturvedi is a scientist with the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India, New Delhi; Dr. Kishore Paknikar is the former Director, Agharkar Research Institute, Pune and Visiting Professor, IIT Bombay. Views personal.)

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