Facts about India Rupee Symbol

Now Indian Rupee has a new symbol and this is how it looks. This new symbol which has been shortlisted through a contest run by Finance Ministry of India. You can read about that Rupee design contest here. 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.

The winning designers concept was 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. The winning designer is an IIT post-graduate D Udaya Kumar.

Along with the announcement of the result, there have been a number of controversies as well. One of the RTI activist had revealed that the panel took less than 20 seconds to go through each of the design and analyze. This is what the activist revealed according to RTI Documents :

• Non-eligible candidate was shortlisted in top five finalists. As candidate had submitted four designs.
• One finalist was in contact with Finance Ministry and RBI prior to competition.
• Design concept or brief was not put in front of jury along with Indian Rupee symbol design.
• No marks or grades were allotted to selected (2644) candidates design entries, in the process of shortlisting top five finalist design entries.
• Jury had spends less than 20 seconds on each design entries to analyze it .
• Three jury member were absent in two days long meeting dated 29th Sept. and 30th Sept. 2009.
• One jury member from Ministry of Culture was absent on the day of final presentation.
• All seven jury member had never meet in this whole selection process in any given time.
• No records are available with Finance Ministry which could indicate how many total design entries Finance Ministry had received!
• Advertisement was only published in English language.

Keeping aside all the controversies, I am happy that there is a new symbol for Indian Rupee!