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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.)

Why we shouldn’t erase the anti-hero

Writer: Aditi Pai
Aditi Pai
Mar 23, 2025
3 min read

A history scrubbed of its ‘villains’ is a story half told.

The past is beautiful depending upon which way you look at it---reminiscing is romantic but digging up can be dangerous. For, it can throw up skeletons. The past has a touch of nostalgia and mystery; worn out black stones whisper stories of kings and queens, the peeling paint of the walls is witness to stately gatherings and the fading inscriptions evoke images of scholars recording the times. The past talks to us through sepia-tinted pages, as ever-changing oral legends and through broken stones and pillars. Not all stories are what fairytales are made of; we have violence, oppression and gore. The land has seen bloodshed along with bounty, poetry and poverty, kind kings and evil enemies. But they’ve come, lived and left their mark. Can we or should we erase those scars and memories of pain? Do we want to erase the villain?


The current villain in question is Aurangzeb, probably the last Mughal emperor who ruled with might. His tomb, rather non-descript, is suddenly at the centre of a storm. A tomb that dates back 300 years and was almost forgotten until a controversy reminded people of its existence. The ‘Tomb of Aurangzeb’ as its recorded with the Archaeological Survey of India, stands neglected in Khultabad. Tourists to Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar, throng to the Ajanta and Ellora caves, to the Mughal-era Bibi Ka Maqbara and to the Daulatabad Fort but rarely stop by here. The reasons are rooted in our historical records—the Mughal emperor buried there, inflicted pain, taxes, atrocities and violence on the natives of the land. The architecture isn’t of significance or beauty either. The place is best left ignored, allowed to rest as a relic of the past, as a reminder of the end of the era that saw magnificent architectural monuments, bloody wars of expansion and conquest and a period that left its imprint on the land’s social and economic fabric. By popularly read historical accounts, Aurangazeb was evil. And now, after three centuries, there’s an uproar demanding the erasure of any sign of him.


Can we wipe villains out of public memory? Villains also play their part in society. Without a villain, the hero cannot really shine. Every story needs a villain who create conflict, challenges and becomes the motivation for the good person to emerge as the ‘hero’. The worst brings out the best. The antagonistic provokes the protagonist. After all, we’ve always been told about a ‘trial by fire’, haven’t we? Any writer of fiction or crime thrillers will tell you that the villain adds spice to a story. Be it in our epics, in Shakespearean dramas, in fables, a villain symbolises all that is unpleasant and unwanted. If there were to be no bad, how would we even know what’s right?


To erase the villain is to erase struggle. Imagine deleting Genghis Khan from Mongol history—what would be left of the legend of their resilience? Or wiping away Stalin from Soviet memory—who then would embody the perils of unchecked power? Negatives have the potential to throw light on various aspects—on justice, ethical and moral considerations, on accountability and on choosing the right path. Just like the sane advice of ‘keep the enemy close to you’, we must observe the antagonist and learn. The villain is the one who turns us, regular well-meaning and hard-working people, into everyday heroes. The horrors of the past serve as warnings. They remind us of what happens when tyranny goes unchallenged, when ambition turns ruthless, and when power disregards the governed. Aurangzeb’s name may evoke pain, but it also carries lessons—about resistance, about endurance, and about the cost of imperial arrogance. Consider the fate of Napoleon, once seen as both a liberator and a dictator. His name is synonymous with military genius, yet his ambition led France into ruin. And yet, can we erase him? Without Napoleon, the modern European order—its laws, its borders, its rivalries—would be incomprehensible. Villains should be penalised and punished and made an example of. But to erase them is to do disservice to society and to future generations. For, you can never truly understand the powers of the hero until the villain presents challenges!

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