“Any fool can criticize, complain, and condemn—and most fools do’, said Dale Carnegie in his classic ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’. “but it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving.” We Indians have mastered the art of criticism. We have the ability to criticize anyone and everyone for one reason or other. Just switch on any channel on electronic media randomly at any time of the day and you can rest assure that on the channel the so called experts are busy in their business of criticizing and condemning someone important as if everything is so bad with everything in India that we must be in perennial state of shame to be born as Indian.Condemnation is addictive and once you get used to it, it becomes almost imposiible to live without condemning others. It is more intoxicating that even the most powerful drug which gives you a high so quickly. It reminds me a story of a jawan who was used to be drunk quite oftenAn army jawan was in the habit of getting drunk too often. He faced suspensions and other punishments but did not improve and his drinking habit got worsened. Everyone gave up.One day a kind hearted senior army officer tried to reform him and he called him to his office and said very kindly, "Dear Friend, you have suffered so much in your life due to your habit of drinking. If you give up drinking, you can one day become a Colonel."The jawan saluted the officer smartly and said, "I know that Sir. But when I am drunk, I do not consider myself less than a General."Emmet Fox, a New Thought spiritual leader of the early 20th century said so wisely, ‘Criticism is an indirect form of self-boasting’. When we are criticizing others, we are on the top of the world as we feel that we are better than the person whom we are criticizing. So you can imagine the high of the critic who has chosen to criticize the Prime Minister of India or even better, the President of United States of America?The Futility of CriticismIt is very difficult, even impossible, to appreciate or accept appreciation, once you have been addicted to criticism. I have myself discovered it recently, when I published an article “
Now let us look at the hard facts rather than individual opinions. The list of the top 10 countries, based on the rape per 1000 population, are as following:-1              Lesotho                0.844     2              New Zealand        0.315     3              Belgium                0.299     4              Iceland                  0.286     5              Norway                0.203 6              Israel                     0.166     7              Finland                  0.141     8              Chile                      0.12        9              Mongolia             0.118     10           Ireland                 0.102 Don’t be surprised, if these names appear familiar to you. You have already seen these names on the top of CPI list of Transparency International as the least corrupt country. So the bad news for critics of India is that Indian are not on the top on rape list. We are not even the top 50 countries of the world. Kindly visit the site http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Crime/Rapes/Per-capitaand check the information yourself.The fact is that the annual rape rate in India is just 0.02 per 1000 people in 2012 (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics#India).  So, we have enough reasons to celebrate Indian values and Indian males now, once we know the full fact of the case. However, instead, we are busy criticizing India all the time.Why Perceptions Are So Deceptive?We are too often fooled by our intuition which is full of biases and prejudices. Psychologist called such error of judgment as "Availability Bias". When Media give disproportionate coverage to negative events and ignore everything positive, our perceptions tend to become much more negative than reality. Psychologist defines ‘Availability Bias’ as a human cognitive bias that causes people to overestimate the probability of events associated with memorable or vivid occurrences. Because memorable events are further magnified by coverage in the media, the bias is compounded on the societal level. (Kindly visit http://www.wisegeek.org/what-is-availability-bias.htmto know more about ‘Availability Bias’).Seek Only TruthThere is no doubt that criticism sometime plays an important role in improving individuals and organizations. However, relying on criticism alone without appreciation can starve the soul of individuals and cripple the nation.  We as Indians must learn to appreciate what is good in us rather than always talking about what is bad in us. Charles Michael Schwab, an American steel magnate, under whose leadership, Bethlehem Steel became the second largest steel maker in the United States said, “I have yet to find the man, however exalted his station, who did not do better work and put forth greater effort under a spirit of approval than under a spirit of criticism”.Once we focus on appreciation, we may soon realize that we are one of greatest nation of the world and that it is not without reason that India is considered to be spiritual guru of the world.  Let us learn to appreciate ourselves and others using criticism only when it becomes absolutely necessary.