It’s Official !! Finally Indian Rupee has a symbol.
After delaying its verdict by many weeks, a five-men jury at last chose IIT, Guwahati post-graduate D Udaya Kumar’s design as the symbol of the Indian Currency from the shortlisted entries in an all India Contest late on Wednesday evening.
And on thursday afternoon, a Union Cabinet meeting, headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, too approved the design.
“It denotes the robustness of the Indian Economy,” said the information & broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni, announcing the cabinet decision.
“The symbol for the Rupee would lend a distinctive character and identity to the currency and further highlight the strength and robustness of the Indian Economy as also a favoured destination for global investments,” said an official statement.
The symbol which is a merger of the Devanagari ‘Ra’ and the Roman capital ‘R’ without the stem, will distinguish the Indian Currency 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.
However, it might take more than a year for the new symbol to come into use throughout the country and about two years for it to be popular internationally, said Ms.Ambika Soni.
For being internationally recognised and easily printed on electronic and print media, the new symbol has to be accepted by the international unicode consortium’s unicode technical committee that is responsible for the development and maintenance of the Unicode Standard.
In fact, the new symbol had been designed keeping in mind the ease with which it can be incorporated into the existing software systems.
As part of the strategy on incorporating the new rupee with the mainstream, the government said that the national association of software companies, Nasscom, will approach IT firms to embed the symbol in their operative software, as a new programme or as an update.
The exercise followed Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee’s announcement that the government intended “to formalise a symbol for the Indian Rupee which reflects and captures Indian Ethos and culture” in his 2010 Budget speech.
A Proud Moment for India ! Many Congratulations to IIT Guwahati Post Graduate D Udaya Kumar .
It is good that the Indian authorities has at last agreed on a symbol to indicate the Rupee. It may help increase the importance and acknowledgement of the Indian Rupee as a currency everywhere.
Great News !!! Cheers to IITians. Would be better if they will release new paper for rupees. It will stop fake currency problems also.
Indian Government is in talk with few companies abroad who has developed such papers which cant be replicated by (PA…..) terrorists.
Topic to follow !!!
AMIT