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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.)

The Rapper Who Rattled Kathmandu

Writer: Kiran D. Tare
Kiran D. Tare
Mar 14
3 min read

Nepal stands at a rare political crossroads. Six months after violent protests shook the Himalayan republic and forced the exit of former prime minister K. P. Sharma Oli, voters have delivered a sweeping mandate to a new generation of leadership. At the centre of that political earthquake is Balendra Shah, the 35-year-old rapper-turned-politician whose Rastriya Swatantra Party secured a commanding majority in the parliamentary elections of March 5.


Few figures better capture the restless mood of modern Nepal. Shah, popularly known as ‘Balen,’ first gained prominence in the country’s fledgling hip-hop scene where his lyrics railed against corruption, political inertia and the hypocrisies of the ruling class. In a political culture dominated for decades by ageing leaders from the Nepali Congress and the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist–Leninist), the rapper’s blunt rhetoric struck a chord with urban youth frustrated by stagnation and patronage politics.


Hailing from Mahottari district in Nepal’s Madhesh region, Shah possesses a cosmopolitan linguistic repertoire uncommon among the country’s younger politicians. Fluent in Nepali, English and Maithili, he has cultivated a following that stretches beyond Kathmandu’s urban middle class. Yet it is not linguistic bridge-building for which he has attracted the most attention. Rather, it is his willingness to challenge Nepal’s traditional diplomatic caution, particularly towards India.


As mayor of Kathmandu, a position he won in 2022 as a political outsider, Shah built a reputation as an anti-establishment reformer who spoke directly to frustrated voters. But he also repeatedly courted controversy. In June 2023 he ordered a ban on the screening of Indian films in Kathmandu after the Bollywood movie Adipurush included a line suggesting that Janaki, better known as the goddess Sita, was “a daughter of India”. The remark provoked nationalist outrage in Nepal, where Sita is traditionally believed to have been born in Janakpur.


Another symbolic gesture caused diplomatic ripples. Shah displayed a map of ‘Greater Nepal’ in his office, a cartographic vision that includes territories currently administered by India. Such imagery resonates with long-standing nationalist claims in Nepal, especially regarding disputed areas such as Kalapani, Limpiyadhura and Lipulekh - territories claimed by Kathmandu but controlled by New Delhi.


In November 2025, weeks the so-called ‘Gen Z’ protests shook the country, Shah posted a Facebook message laced with insults directed at India, the United States, China and Nepal’s own political parties including the Rastriya Swatantra Party he would later join. The post triggered a political storm and was soon deleted, but it reinforced the impression of a leader comfortable with confrontation and unfiltered rhetoric.


The electoral wave that has now carried Shah to power is remarkable even by Nepal’s turbulent standards. For decades the Nepali Congress and the CPN-UML dominated the country’s politics, occasionally challenged by the Maoist movement led by Pushpa Kamal Dahal, better known as Prachanda. The Maoists’ sweeping victory in the 2008 elections, which brought Dahal to the premiership, was once considered the most dramatic upheaval in Nepal’s democratic era. Yet even that upset did not inflict the kind of comprehensive humiliation suffered by the traditional parties in the latest polls.


The four-year-old RSP has achieved what many observers thought impossible under Nepal’s complex dual-election system: a sweeping majority. The result shattered entrenched political structures. In perhaps the most symbolic contest of the campaign, Shah defeated former prime minister Oli in Jhapa-5, a constituency long regarded as a bastion of the veteran leader.


For many voters, Shah’s inexperience is evidence that he is not tainted by the compromises of the old political elite.


His party has capitalised on that sentiment with an ambitious reform agenda. The RSP has promised to investigate the assets of politicians who have held power since the 1990s, nationalise properties obtained illegally and overhaul Nepal’s judiciary by ending political appointments of judges. One proposal even suggests live-streaming court proceedings to enhance transparency.


Still, Shah’s rise raises pressing questions about Nepal’s foreign policy, especially its relationship with India. Since the signing of the India–Nepal Treaty of Peace and Friendship in 1950, India has been Nepal’s most important economic partner. New Delhi continues to provide substantial development assistance while repeatedly helping Nepal during its many crises.


For Shah, the challenge will be proving that nationalist rhetoric can coexist with pragmatic diplomacy, especially with India. He should realise that rap battles are easy; managing geopolitics is harder.

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