The Hindu Business Line : `Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?'

When finance pains, commerce can soothe. Thus, even as Mr Chidambaram is locking horns with transporters over service tax, Mr Kamal Nath is freeing exporters from that yoke.

The Ministry in news, therefore, is Commerce, not Finance, so we better come to terms with the word.

It is "the activity of buying and selling, especially on a large scale," explains the Concise Oxford English Dictionary.

It is "social intercourse, interchange of ideas, opinions, or sentiments," says the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary (www.m-w.com) and relegates trade to the second place.

Third meaning, as sexual intercourse, is not too common; `archaic', Oxford would say, and Encarta would have none of it, though www. dictionary.reference.com would have no such qualms.

There is a round game at cards, in which the cards are subject to exchange, barter, or trade, and it goes by the name commerce. Also, Commerce is a place name in many states of the US, as for instance Commerce in Missouri with a population of 173, or a suburb "5 mi/8 km ESE of downtown Los Angeles", as stated by The Columbia Gazetteer of North America.

"He is now in some commerce with my lady, and will by and by depart," is what you can hear Maria say in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night.

Another occurrence of `commerce' is in Hamlet where the prince of Denmark asks Ophelia: "Ha, ha! Are you honest?" She is stumped: "My lord?" Another query: "Are you fair?"

He seems to sound like an auditor, but Ophelia asks: "What means your lordship?"

Hamlet replies, "That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no discourse to your beauty." The lady asks the prince, "Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?"

That honesty goes well with commerce is something our exporters should remember, lest shoddy projects get shipped greedily, only to be rejected by the buyers.

The word intercourse, however, owes its origin to Old French entrecours, meaning exchange or commerce. Thus, it is not surprising that Part XIII of the Constitution of India is titled, "Trade, commerce and intercourse within the territory of India." Origin of the word is from Latin commercium, a combo of cum, together, and merx, merchandise. Also derived from merx are market, marketable, mart, mercantile, mercer, merchandise, merchant and merchantman, according to Latin Wordstock. For merchant, the Latin equivalents are mercator and mercatoris. Trafficking as a meaning of commercium has, however, fallen into disrepute.

Thomas Gray acknowledges the importance of commerce — that it can change "the fate and genius of nations". But Walter Bagehot had said, "Honour sinks where commerce long prevails."

Not too inspiring when trade and commerce are stealing the limelight. Ralph Waldo Emerson may equally be critical: "Commerce is of trivial import; love, faith, truth of character, the aspiration of man, these are sacred."

Soren Kierkegaard sees the death of demand all round: "Not just in commerce but in the world of ideas too our age is putting on a veritable clearance sale. Everything can be had so dirt-cheap that one begins to wander whether in the end anyone will want to make a bid."

A quote of Edgar Hoover that pops up from www.brainyquote.com is interesting: "I regret to say that we of the FBI are powerless to act in cases of oral-genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate commerce."

For computer geeks, commerce comes after `e' to mean online transactions. "From a marketing point-of-view, commerce is discussed with reference to the three big C's: Content, commerce, and community," notes www.netlingo.com.

"These are thought to be the three components driving the new economy." The definition of commerce in www.computeruser.com is more specific: "This is a HTTP server that performs business procedures. Information is transferred from the server to the Web browser in a code to keep information secure."

"Commercial is 1687 as an adjective," informs www.etymonline.com. "As a noun meaning `advertising broadcast on radio or TV' it is first recorded 1935." Oddly, Oxford Dictionary of Business does not have an entry for `commerce' before `commercial'. Nor is there place for the word in Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage.

A chamber of commerce is an organisation consisting of people who work together to improve business in their city or local area; they do commerce on commerce, one may say, because they would be interchanging ideas on the activity of buying and selling.

"The Chambre de Commerce of Marseilles (1599) was the first organisation to use the name," informs www.bartleby.com.

"The idea spread through France in the 17th and 18th centuries." The first to be formed in the UK was on the island of Jersey in 1768, and in the same year, the US too had its first Chamber of Commerce.

In ancient times, distance hindered commerce. Now, developments in transport and communication have made commerce easier.

The current blockades are of attitudes that translate as trade barriers, be they tariff or otherwise. Let's hope they will "by and by depart".

ComingToTerms@TheHindu.co.in

More Stories on : Foreign Trade | Coming to Terms

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page

Stories in this Section
Will US repeal Byrd Amendment?

Pushing agro exports

`Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?'

AP's changing power equations

How `adequate' is Basel II

RBI Annual Report 2003-04 — Exhaustive and rigorous

Serial scams

Stock market

JK Pharma clarifies