Symbol of Indian Currency NEW DELHI,
India :- Finally Indian Rupee got its own symbol, a much awaited release which will lend the Indian currency a unique identity in the Global markets. The Cabinet approved symbol is an amalgam of the Devanagari ‘Ra’ and the Roman capital ‘R’ without the stem and two parallel lines running at the top. The Symbol has a distinctive character resembling a blend of modernity and Indian culture, distinguishing it from currencies of other countries like Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Indonesia which also use the word “Rupee” or “Rupiah” to identify their respective currencies.
The need for a universal symbol was felt because even today, the rupee is known differently in different parts of India. As rupaya (Hindi), rupiyo (Gujarati), roopayi (Telugu), (Tulu) and (Kannada) or one of the other terms derived from Sanskrit. And in West Bengal, Tripura, Mizoram, Orissa, and Assam, the Indian Rupee is officially known by names derived from the Sanskrit, Tanka. The hunt for the symbol began on March 5, 2009 when the Indian Government announced a contest to create a universal symbol for the Rupee, to eliminate diversification and also because of its ever-growing influence on Global markets.
The symbol will be used once it is accepted by the International Unicode Consortium’s Unicode Technical Committee that is responsible for the development and maintenance of the Unicode Standard. Reportedly, the new Rupee will also find its way onto keyboards of Indian manufactured computer systems and various Operative softwares, once Nasscom approaches IT firms to embed the symbol in various softwares (as an update).
The symbol selected has been designed by an IIT-Bombay PG D Udaya Kumar and was selected from among five short listed symbols. Kumar, who will join the Department of Design at IIT Guwahati on Friday, explained that the design is based on the Indian Tricolour.
“My design is based on the Tricolour with two lines at the top and white space in between. I wanted the symbol for the Rupee to represent the Indian flag. It is a perfect blend of Indian and Roman letters: a capital ‘R’, and Devnagari ’Ra’, which represent rupiya, to appeal to international and Indian audiences. After working on the design for few months, I shortlisted eight to 10 designs and then refined them further till I got this one,” said Kumar.
His entry was chosen from 3,331 designs competing for the currency symbol. He will get an award of Rs 2.5 lakh. All new notes will now bear the symbol. The top 5 selections will receive Rs 25K each irrespective of getting selected as the final symbol. The entries were presented to the Jury in such a manner that identity of the competitors was not revealed to the Jury members. The Jury selected five final entries and also gave its evaluation of these five entries to the Government to take a final decision.
However, it seems that the other side of this story has been neglected.
Mr. Rakesh Singh filed an RTI to find out the selection process. Here is what he found – There were total of 3331 entries that came in from the design competition announced by Indian Government. The jurors took only 17 hours to go through all the 3331 designs, which means roughly 18 seconds per design were given. The RTI query also clearly shows that the procedure was not at all transparent – It was not video-graphed, which now-a-days is a norm for all such government decisions. Additionally, whole jury was not present during the Rupee symbol presentations.
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