(a)’Those who do ill shall suffer more if they are not caught than those that are’. (Boethius)

• The thinker maintains that those who avoid punishment continue to be bad, rather than good and therefore move themselves yet further from blessedness and ultimate happiness.
• Boethius says that virtuous men are always good and bad men always undesirable and hence steps should be taken to correct the bad men and transform them to good one.
• The above thinking is very much relevant these days. State can only check crimes, corruption, etc. by ensuring that such people are identified and given exemplary punishment.

(b) ‘The king should surrender his individuality in the interest of his duty’. (Kautilya)

• The first indicator of good governance is that the ruler should surrender his individuality in the interest of his duties.
• Kautilya’s concept reverberates in Max Weber’s concept of rational authority exemplified by a depersonalized bureaucracy.
• K P. Jaiswal aptly uses the term ‘constitutional slave’ for Kautilya’s king – a term popularized in England by Locke in the late seventeenth century.
• The concept that a constitutional government is an effectively and regularly limited and restrained government is a much more recent innovation.
• No unlimited and unrestrained government can be a good government, howsoever good or noble be the ruler. Kautilya’s king acts in concert with the seven organs (satang) and values their advice.
• The ruler’s leadership, therefore, consists in his ability to persuade and motivate colleagues and to co-ordinate as a leader so that the collectively agreed upon goals can be executed in time, exactitude and quality.
• Kautilya recommended that the king has to come up in the way that he should think not in his happiness but in the happiness of his people.
• He suggests that the kings’ welfare lies not in his own pleasure but in that of his subjects.
• This philosophy is still relevant even in the democratic form of government. People expect the paternalistic approach of the state. Even the civil servants are being suggested that they should forget that they are mere individuals. They become ‘person’ which comes only in comparison with other person.