What war hysteria hides: deaths, destruction, disinformation

A man inspects his house that was damaged by cross-border shelling, in Kotmaira village along the Line of Control in Akhnoor Sector, J&K
| Photo Credit: Channi Anand

The military escalation between India and Pakistan following the Pahalgam massacre has been accompanied by a barrage of misinformation and disinformation. Data shows that concerned citizens, particularly from the border areas, have intensely searched for war-related news since the recent conflict between the nuclear powers started.

Over the past two weeks, public interest in war-related topics surged to the highest levels in recent times in India (Chart 1). Google searches for terms such as ‘war’ and ‘Pakistan’ hit the highest point in five years.

Chart 1 | This shows the interest in terms such as ‘war’ and related topics in the last five years in India on Google. The value 100 corresponds to the peak number of searches in the given time period

Searches for the terms ‘nuclear’ and ‘drones’ also peaked. This shows a spike in both curiosity and anxiety as tensions kept escalating.

However, many online searches led to events that never actually happened. An examination of the ‘news events’ that were debunked by fact-checkers following Operation Sindoor shows the extent and nature of fake narratives in circulation.

One prominent example was the viral fake news about the ‘destruction of Karachi port’, shared by a user on X and viewed over 2.5 million times. The image was actually from an Israeli air strike on Rafah in Gaza. Another widely circulated and inflammatory post claimed that an Indian drone had struck an area near a mosque in Islamabad; that was, in fact, a fire accident from the previous year.

A search on AltNews, a fact-checking platform, reveals the many hyper-nationalistic claims that have been circulating on social media handles in both Pakistan and India. These posts have often been accompanied by commentary — subtle or explicit — calling for war. Such commentary tends to obscure the harshest reality of war — its toll on human lives.

A look at the death tolls from past wars and major operations involving India (where reliable data is available) reveals the human cost of conflict (Chart 2).

Chart 2 | Indian defence personnel killed/wounded in select wars and major operations

Over 13,140 defence personnel laid down their lives in the J&K Operation (1947-48), India-China War (1962), India-Pakistan War (1965), India-Pakistan War (1971), Kargil War (1999), and Operation Pawan undertaken by Indian peacekeeping forces for the disarmament of the LTTE. In addition, over 26,500 defence personnel were wounded in these wars/operations.

Frequent clashes with hostile neighbours also come at a financial cost, as weapons are amassed over years. Over the past three decades, India has consistently featured among the world’s top arms importers. 

Chart 3 shows India’s position globally. The country has featured in the list of top five arms importers since 2000.

Chart 3 | The chart shows India’s rank among the world’s top arms importers in the 1991-2024 period

India was not in the list of top 10 arms importers only once since 1991, in 1993. Apart from importing arms, India also spends a substantial sum in manufacturing weapons and maintaining the armed forces.

War places a heavy burden on a country’s economy and also hampers trade. Sanctions on warring nations often trigger a financial downturn. A look at the figures of countries that are currently at war shows that their GDP growth rate had taken a hit during the conflict (Chart 4).

Chart 4 | The chart shows the GDP growth rate for select countries that are currently at war. For instance, Russia saw its GDP fall to -2.1% in 2022 following the start of its war with Ukraine

Russia rebounded from the COVID-19 pandemic with a 5.6% GDP growth in 2021, only to see its GDP fall to -2.1% in 2022 following the start of its war with Ukraine. Similarly, Ukraine’s GDP had been steadily growing at around 2-3% annually from 2016, except during the pandemic year of 2020.

But the outbreak of war in 2022 caused Ukraine’s GDP to plummet to an unprecedented -28.8%. Israel, which has been at war with Hamas since 2023, also recorded its lowest GDP growth in almost eight years in 2023 (with the exception of the pandemic year of 2020).

Source: The data for the charts were sourced from Parliament Q&A, SIPRI, Google Trends and World Bank

vignesh.r@thehindu.co.in

sambavi.p@thehindu.co.in