New Delhi: The Indian rupee will have its own symbol, a mix of the Devanagri 'Ra' and Roman 'R', to become the fifth currency in the world to have a distinct identity.
The new symbol, designed by IIT post-graduate D Uday Kumar was approved by the Union Cabinet on Thursday.
The rupee will join the elite club of US dollar, British pound-sterling, Euro and Japanese yen to have its own symbol.
The symbol will be printed or embossed on currency notes or coins, Information and Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni told reporters after the Cabinet meeting.
Soni said the government will try that the symbol is adopted within six months in the country and globally within 18 to 24 months.
The symbol will feature on computer key boards and softwares so that it can be printed and displayed in electronic and print, she said.
Soni said it would also help in distinguishing the Indian currency from rupee or rupiah of countries like Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Indonesia.
Kumar's symbol is an amalgam of the Devanagari ‘Ra' and the Roman capital ‘R' without the stem, very much in line with what Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee had envisioned. “We intend to formalise a symbol for the Indian rupee which reflects and captures Indian ethos and culture,” Mukherjee said in his Budget speech this year.
The chosen symbol has the Finance Minister's approval, said a Ministry official.
The Ministry had organised a symbol design competition with a prize money of Rs 2.5 lakh with the condition that it should be applicable to the standard keyboard, be in the national language script or a visual representation and should represent the historical and cultural ethos of the country.
While the basic aim of the new symbol is to provide the Indian rupee international recognition as the country's economy exerts more influence in the global space, the unique sign will also help isolate the currency from the current abbreviation ‘Rs' which is used by neighbouring Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka.
Kumar's concept, an official said, is based on the Tricolour and “arithmetic equivalence”.
While the white space between the two horizontal lines gives the impression of the national flag with the Ashok Chakra, the two bold parallel lines stand for ‘equals to', representing balance in the economy, both within and with other economies of the world.
Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia on Thursday said the rupee symbol approved by the Cabinet needs to be incorporated into typewriters and computer keyboards to enable its better day-to-day usage.
"It's quite a nice symbol. This thing (the rupee symbol) has to be brought into current usage. The most important thing is to make sure that in typewriters the symbol is somewhere there," he said here after a meeting with Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee.
Ahluwalia said changes should be made in both hardware and software systems of computers "so that when I want the symbol in, it should be there". The rupee will soon join the elite currencies like the US dollar, the euro, British pound and Japanese yen in having a distinct identity. PTI
