"From this it follows that con-sideration for other persons or for other living beings is very vital for goodness and want of consideration for other people makes human beings selfish, regardless for other people's good"
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Desai’s moral logic is almost bureaucratically blunt: goodness is not a private glow, it’s a measurable social behavior. The hyphenated “con-sideration” feels like a printed speech artifact, but it also slows the reader down, turning a familiar virtue into a deliberate act of “considering” - weighing another life in your decisions. He widens the circle quickly, from “other persons” to “other living beings,” suggesting an ethic that isn’t confined to party, caste, or even species. That expansion matters in a political culture where compassion can get trapped inside the boundaries of community loyalty.
The phrasing “From this it follows” does more than sound formal; it frames ethics as cause-and-effect. Desai is making a leader’s argument: if you want a good society, you don’t start with slogans or law-and-order rhetoric, you start with the everyday discipline of regard. The subtext is a warning aimed at power itself. “Want of consideration” isn’t cast as mere rudeness; it’s the seed of selfishness, and selfishness in public life becomes corruption, cruelty, and indifference to the vulnerable.
Contextually, this tracks with Desai’s reputation for austerity and moral rectitude in post-Independence India, when the country’s democratic ideals were constantly being tested by scarcity, factionalism, and the temptations of state power. The line reads like a rebuke to transactional politics: public service without empathy is just self-interest with a government letterhead.
The phrasing “From this it follows” does more than sound formal; it frames ethics as cause-and-effect. Desai is making a leader’s argument: if you want a good society, you don’t start with slogans or law-and-order rhetoric, you start with the everyday discipline of regard. The subtext is a warning aimed at power itself. “Want of consideration” isn’t cast as mere rudeness; it’s the seed of selfishness, and selfishness in public life becomes corruption, cruelty, and indifference to the vulnerable.
Contextually, this tracks with Desai’s reputation for austerity and moral rectitude in post-Independence India, when the country’s democratic ideals were constantly being tested by scarcity, factionalism, and the temptations of state power. The line reads like a rebuke to transactional politics: public service without empathy is just self-interest with a government letterhead.
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| Topic | Ethics & Morality |
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