Indian Rupee Symbol Approved

Everyone is aware of the symbols of the US Dollar, British Pound, European Euro and Japanese Yen. But an Indian Rupee symbol! Yes. This has been finally approved at last by the Union Cabinet in New Delhi, and India becomes only the 5th country in the world to have a currency symbol. Such a symbol was necessary due to the growing influence of the Indian economy worldwide. Also, the rupee currency is used by other countries like Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka. The selected symbol is a mix of the Roman R and the Devnagiri Ra, with two parallel lines running at the top. For a start, now all new currency notes printed in India will bear this symbol.

There were five symbols that were shortlisted from thousands of entries, and a prize of 250,000 rupees (approximately $5,000) was kept for the winning entry. And now this symbol has been approved. Union Information and Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni held a press conference to announce the new symbol. She added, "It might take up to 6 months/1 year for the new Rupee symbol to be used throughout India, and about two years for international acceptance." D. Udaya Kumar, a postgraduate from the Indian Institute of Technology who designed this symbol said, "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."

Now for those wondering how all of us are going to type this on our computers, the Indian Rupee symbol will have to be approved by the Unicode Consortium's Unicode Technical Committee. This committee is in charge of the maintenance and development of the Unicode Standard, which also includes the Unicode Character Database. The approval should not go through any hassles for 2 reasons. One, India is a member of the Unicode Consortium, and 2, the new Indian Rupee symbol has actually been designed keeping in mind how easily it can be incorporated into various software systems.