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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 Southern Alignment

Writer: Dr. V.L. Dharurkar
Dr. V.L. Dharurkar
Feb 23
3 min read

As protectionism hardens in the North, India and Brazil are discovering that shared history, democratic instinct and strategic ambition can still make south–south cooperation matter.

In an international system increasingly shaped by tariffs, technology controls and geopolitical blocs, the world’s large democracies of the Global South are searching for ballast. Few pairings illustrate this better than India and Brazil – both continental powers born of colonial extraction, now attempting to turn scale into strategic autonomy.


Brazil, South America’s largest country, sits amid a ring of smaller neighbours and vast natural abundance. India occupies a similarly dominant position in South Asia. Both emerged from European empires with fragile institutions, deep inequality and an instinctive scepticism of great-power tutelage. That parallel history now underpins a renewed effort to give south–south cooperation real content rather than rhetorical warmth.


The recent visit of Brazil President, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, to India timed around the Global AI Impact Summit was therefore more than ceremonial. It reflected a shared judgment that the old vocabulary of non-alignment is no longer sufficient, but that strategic dependence on any single power is riskier still.


India has been central to reframing that debate. Under Narendra Modi, New Delhi has sought to rebrand its post-Cold War hedging as leadership of the Global South. Three high-level conferences on southern development priorities have signalled an ambition to move beyond nostalgia for the Non-Aligned Movement towards something more transactional: infrastructure, digital public goods, climate finance and supply-chain resilience. Brazil, which has long oscillated between Atlanticism and southern solidarity, now appears receptive.


Tangible Results

The results were tangible. Nearly ten memoranda of understanding were signed, covering agriculture, energy, critical minerals, digital infrastructure and climate cooperation.


While bilateral commerce between the countries has grown by over a quarter in 2023, it remains modest for economies of their size. The declared aim to double trade to $30bn by 2030 will require faster customs clearance, deeper agricultural integration and service-sector openness. Brazil’s concerns about the weaponisation of tariffs resonate strongly in New Delhi, which has learned the costs of overreliance on external markets.


Technology has become the sharpest edge of this partnership. India’s experience with digital public infrastructure, be it payments, identity and welfare delivery, offers Brazil a model for scaling inclusion without surrendering sovereignty. Cooperation on semiconductors, artificial intelligence and blockchain is no longer aspirational; it is strategic. Control over data, chips and critical minerals now shapes national power as decisively as oil once did.


Natural Bridge

Energy and climate form another natural bridge. Both countries see renewable energy, biofuels and clean hydrogen not only as climate imperatives but as industrial opportunities. Joint research in oil, gas and green technologies reflects a shared refusal to accept a development path dictated entirely by richer nations that industrialised first and decarbonise later.


Security cooperation, though quieter, is also deepening. Maritime training, naval research and submarine technology signal recognition that democratic autonomy requires credible defence capacity. Brazil’s consistent support for India’s stance against terrorism, and intelligence-sharing on extremist threats, adds ballast to what might otherwise seem a purely economic alignment.


Geopolitically, India and Brazil are converging on reformist multilateralism. Brazil’s support for India’s permanent membership of the UN Security Council is not altruism; it reflects frustration with institutions that no longer mirror global realities. Both countries see forums such as BRICS and the G20 as vehicles to amplify southern priorities rather than echo northern disputes. Climate finance, development lending and technology access dominate their agenda.


There is, of course, a risk of overstatement. South–south cooperation has a long history of grand promises and thin delivery. Bureaucratic inertia, domestic politics and economic volatility can derail the best-laid plans. Yet this partnership feels unusually grounded. The agreements are specific, the timelines realistic, the incentives aligned.


What distinguishes this moment is the context here. As globalisation fragments and great powers retreat into economic nationalism, middle-income democracies face a choice: compete alone, or collaborate deliberately. India and Brazil have chosen the latter course out of self-interest.


If the 20th century belonged to alliances forged in war, the 21st may yet reward partnerships built on development. For the Global South, the sun is not merely rising; it is learning how to shine on its own terms.


(The writer is a foreign affairs expert. Views personal.)


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