An Old Story – The ant and the grasshopper story
The Ant works hard in the withering heat all summer building its house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The Grasshopper thinks the Ant is a fool and laughs & dances & plays the summer away.
Come winter, the Ant is warm and well fed. The Grasshopper has no food or shelter so he dies out in the cold.
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Indian Version:
The Ant works hard in the withering heat all summer building its house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The Grasshopper thinks the Ant’s a fool and laughs & dances & plays the summer away.
Come winter, the shivering Grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the Ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.
NDTV, BBC, CNN show up to provide pictures of the shivering Grasshopper next to a video of the Ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.
The World is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be that this poor Grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?
Arundhati Roy stages a demonstration in front of the Ant’s house.
Medha Patkar goes on a fast along with other Grasshoppers demanding that Grasshoppers be relocated to warmer climates during winter.
Mayawati states this as `injustice’ done on Minorities.
Amnesty International and Koffi Annan criticize the Indian Government for not upholding the fundamental rights of the Grasshopper.
The Internet is flooded with online petitions seeking support to the Grasshopper
Opposition MPs stage a walkout. Left parties call for ‘Bengal Bandh’ in West Bengal and Kerala demanding a Judicial Inquiry.
CPM in Kerala immediately passes a law preventing Ants from working hard in the heat so as to bring about equality of poverty among Ants and Grasshoppers.
Lalu Prasad allocates one free coach to Grasshoppers on all Indian Railway Trains, aptly named as the ‘Grasshopper Rath’.
Finally, the Judicial Committee drafts the ‘ Prevention of Terrorism Against Grasshoppers Act’ [POTAGA], with effect from the beginning of the winter.
Arjun Singh makes ‘Special Reservation ‘ for Grasshoppers in Educational Institutions & in Government Services.
The Ant is fined for failing to comply with POTAGA and having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, it’s home is confiscated by the Government and handed over to the Grasshopper in a ceremony covered by NDTV.
Arundhati Roy calls it ‘ A Triumph of Justice’.
Lalu calls it ‘Socialistic Justice ‘.
CPM calls it the ‘ Revolutionary Resurgence of the Downtrodden ‘
Koffi Annan invites the Grasshopper to address the UN General Assembly.
Many years later…
The Ant has since migrated to the US and set up a multi-billion dollar
company in Silicon Valley, 100s of Grasshoppers still die of starvation despite reservation somewhere in India,
AND
As a result of losing a lot of hard working Ants and feeding the lazy grasshoppers,
India is still a developing country…!!!
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There is not much left to discuss on this story, as it has covered the current situation of news media, so called social activists, politicians of India. The news hungry electronic medias sometimes misproject a situation, where injustice is done to the right person. And what happens is that, ‘many lier’ triumphs over ‘single right’ person or situation.
It all depends upon how a situation is projected in front of public. Sometimes, what happens is that, rich people are projected against poor people living on roadside, and then the public start showing pity on the poor ones and hatred on the rich ones.What the electronic media and the public miss here is ‘the story’ behind the success of rich people, how much hard work it took for them to be rich, and public blindly start hating them. It is the mentality of common people to hate rich people just to hide their jealousy against them.
Where as in the matter of fact, even they want to be rich, have a car, have a bunglow etc. But because they don’t have the same, they hate rich people.
This story of the the ant and the grasshopper is truly an eye operner and sheds light on the reality.
dude i heard this story 2 years back in Nepal. it was published by one of the website. i forgot the name of that guy, but was very interesting at that time because of political scenario.
Hope you will give credit to him.
Thanks
I like to keep up with what other dentists are doing
in the social media and blogging world. Thank you for compiling this resource.