Ant and the Red-Tape

In my childhood my granny used to tell me a story........

Once in a country, fell a drought. There lived a parrot and a sparrow. They flew off to another country in search of food; unfortunately it was also struck by a famine. But there they found a single grain of food. They started to break it into two. After a long struggle they broke it with the help of a  crack in the trunk of a tree. Half of it got stuck in the crack itself and the parrot flew away with the other half. Desperate to have that half grain, the sparrow went to a woodcutter and asked him to open that crack so that it could take that grain.

The woodcutter refused. The sparrow went to the king and asked him to scold the woodcutter for he didn’t open the crack for it.

 The king refused. The sparrow went to the queen and asked her to divorce the king ‘coz he didn’t scold the woodcutter  ‘coz ........and the queen refused.

 So the sparrow went to a snake and asked him to bite the queen ‘coz she ........;.

The snake refused. So it went to a wooden cane and asked it to kill the snake ‘coz.......;.

The cane refused. The sparrow went to the fire and asked it to burn the cane because......;.

Fire declined the request, so the sparrow went to the river and asked it to extinguish the fire but the river refused. So the sparrow now went to the elephant and asked it to drink the waters of the river but the elephant too turned it down.

After losing all hope the sparrow was crying and an ant saw it. It asked the sparrow the reason for its sadness.....the sparrow explained. The ant took the initiative and went into the elephant’s trunk. The elephant said that it will have to drink the whole river only then the scratching might end. The river was petrified and said that it would rather extinguish the fire......and so on the trail went up to the woodcutter and he opened the crack ; finally the sparrow got its half-grain.

In this folklore, we observe that all the trouble was caused for nothing. The woodcutter would have easily opened the crack in the first place.....or if not him the king would have just scolded and ordered him to open it......but no one did his job correctly and finally a feeble and minute ant had to take the enterprise and help the sparrow get its part. Although this is a bedtime story told every alternate night by my Granma and might have no meaning for her but it contains a very significant message in the frame of today’s scenario.  The elephant here represents the red-tape, the sparrow- victim and the feeble and insignificant ant, overtook by pity for the sparrow’s heartache, took the initiative against a very “authoritative” elephant. The ant improved the way things were going and made sparrow’s work easy. The ant in a way here is representing the common man......who is very small in this red-tape world and is scared to heave its say. But he forgets the advantages of his minuteness.

This myth also tells us some other points worth noting like the emotional turn-on of the ant. The ant became emotionally attached with the sparrow and committed itself to bring justice to the ‘victim’. If it would not have done this emotionally it might have backed off due to the fear of the mighty elephant. The other thing is that this sentiment cropped up spontaneously. It didn’t need any external persuasion and the sparrow didn’t have to beg it for help. The ant came out on itself and changed the minds of all those who were certainly burly and brawny than it was and no one blamed it because no one was able to track it down. The same is the case with us people.

Now-a-days many of us are victims of the mechanics of the complicatedly knit red-tape and we are going on to be the sufferers if we don’t rise up. There is a possibility that the woodcutter, king, queen, snake et al had a syndicate of their own and had conspired against the petty sparrow. And we see that they succeeded in their task.....but had to finally give in to the determination of the ant. The chain of reformation which the ant had started continued up and up to the level of the king and even influenced him to kneel.

The ant here was just like a small point, an iota at the foot of a large pyramid. Our beauraucracy is constructed like a pyramid. At the base it is very vast and just like spotting an ant at a pyramid’s base could be a Herculean task by the same token tracking a common man at the clerical level could be difficult....that’s the advantage of minuteness I was talking about earlier. But all it takes is the ‘mettle to enkindle’. You have to take the risk on yourself to start this reformation and decontaminate the system. Although it was difficult for the colossal elephant to spot the tiny ant but the possibility of the elephant spotting the ant and crushing it, never dies. So if you rise, you’ve got to risk yourself. One more thing to be pointed out is that if in ant’s place there would have been some dog or tiger (symbolising some popular people in the system) the same would have been difficult.....because it would have been easier for the elephant to kill that dog and that tiger.

While in this fable we see that the sparrow had an easy access to the king, it is not the same these days. You must ‘know someone’ to approach the high levels unswervingly.....or you’ll just be stuck in the cobweb of the ‘babus’. This fact alone renders the story as theoretical, but the message is very clear and we should learn from it. The ant made the whole system going. So if the red-tape could work then why shouldn’t we take the enterprise? And not just one such sacrifice but we need many volunteers who are not afraid to be trampled beneath the elephant. I know its the ‘easier to say than do’ thing so I don’t put it as a mandatory thing; its not easy to play that ant; but you could at least compress your ‘ego’ the size of the ant instead of the elephant. The society might then be purged of all the ‘scum’ of the red-tape and system.