Even though not fully convertible, the Indian rupee will soon have a distinct identity. With a blend of the Devanagari ‘Ra’ and Roman ‘R’ as its unique symbol, the Indian currency will be joining the elite club of the US dollar, the European euro, the British pound sterling and the Japanese yen to mark its presence in the global arena.
Designed by Bombay IIT post-graduate D. Udaya Kumar, (native of Kallakurichi, Tamil Nadu), the symbol was approved by the Union Cabinet on 15.07.2010 to distinguish the currency of the over $ 1-trillion economy from the rest, such as the rupee or the rupiah of Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Indonesia.
Information and Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni said: “It’s a big statement on the Indian currency. The symbol would lend a distinctive character and identity to the currency and further highlight the strength and global face of the Indian economy.”
Unlike the pound sterling among the four currencies with distinct identities, the Indian currency symbol will not be printed or embossed on paper notes or coins.
It would be included in the ‘Unicode Standard’ and major scripts of the world so as to ensure that it is easily displayed and printed in the electronic and print media.
Ms. Soni pointed out that the symbol would be adopted within a span of six months in the country and in about 18-24 months globally.
Mr. Udaya Kumar’s winning entry was chosen from 3,000 designs received for the currency symbol competition. He will get an award of Rs. 2.5 lakh from the Finance Ministry. The jury, headed by an RBI Deputy Governor, had sent five short-listed entries for the Cabinet’s approval.
When D. Udaya Kumar decided to participate in the competition to create a symbol for the rupee, he looked at a number of Indian scripts to come up with a design. “I saw many regional language scripts but I thought many represented only one region of India. But the Devanagari script is the most extensively used in the country, so I decided to go with that.”
Mr. Kumar said the horizontal line on top used in the Devanagari script was unique to India. “The two horizontal lines and the band between also represent the Indian flag.”
A native of Kallakurichi in Tamil Nadu, Mr. Kumar completed most of his schooling in Chennai.
After studying at the School of Architecture and Planning at Anna University in Chennai, he did his Masters’ at the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay starting 2001, before enrolling for a PhD there in 2005 after a two-year stint in the computer magazine Chip.
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