National Symbols Of India

National Currency Symbol

Indian Rupee – National Currency Symbol

As an official sign of the Indian currency, the Indian rupee sign has been introduced denoting its currency in the country. The Government of India officially presented this design to the citizens on July 15, 2010. It was rigorous exercise to select this sign on the basis of competition open to all residents of India to offer their ideas for this purpose. Rs or Re were the symbols for Indian currency prior to new official currency sign was chosen and adopted. Earlier signs indicated text in a language prevalent in India as considered by best possible language abbreviation in certain languages concerned. New sign is exclusive one for the Indian rupee and differs from the rest countries where currencies are rupee from Sri Lanka, Pakistan to Nepal where rupee sign character is generic U+20A8 ₨ sign. With the double horizontal line on the top portion, the design of new sign is of Devanagari letter "र" as well as “R” from the Latin capital letter.

Origin of the Symbol

Government of India made an announcement on March 05, 2009 for an open contest to create official sign for Indian rupee. The then Finance Minister, Pranab Mukherjee expressed his view while presenting the 2010 Union Budget that the propose of the new sign would showcase the culture and ethos of India on overall aspects. Five symbols were shortlisted out of approximately 3,331 responses received for that. The selected symbols were from entries by Nondita Correa-Mehrotra, Shibin KK, Hitesh Padmashali, D. Udaya Kumar and Shahrukh J Irani. Union Council of Ministers of India had to finally select one of the 5 such symbols on June 24, 2010 for finalization. Union Finance Minister deferred decision and planned for the meeting on July 15, 2010 for final decision. The design which D Udaya Kumar, the son of former DMK MLA, N. Dharmalingam, had created was finally selected.

Design

Both Devanagari letter "र" and Latin capital letter "R" combines in new sign for Indian rupee. This sign combines (ra) sans vertical bar which is very much in accordance to R rotunda in this symbol. There is a parallel lining at the top portion having white spaces there. It actually develops the mentioning of Indian flag and its tricolor sign. As equality sign is indicated from the Indian flag it actually is the metaphor that aims at reducing all sorts of economic discrepancies in the country as a whole.

D. Udaya Kumar, a B.Arch student specializing in the visual communication at the IIT Bombay’s Industrial Design Centre submitted the design which was finally selected. The presentation of this sign explains the idea, philosophy and theme behind this design.

Usage

Soon after the adoption of this symbol by Government of India in July 2010, the authorities took nearly 06 months for total implementation in the country while its global acceptance took 18 to 24 month time.

Today the newly adopted Indian rupee sign has been brought into implementation everywhere and which can be seen in the prominent newspapers, product price tags in all the articles or write-ups which appear in published form and mention Indian rupee new sign rather than earlier Rs. Sign. Many effective solutions are already implemented to use this new symbol well for which development processes are already in practice. In fact WebRupee offers an API to simplify the new rupee symbol use especially when used in websites. The new rupess symbol has been best supported by the Ubuntu operating system which is prime and best computer software to bring everything right in order.

All major Indian Banks have taken initiative to print chequbooks with new Indian rupee sign rather than “Rs” sign used earlier. While issuing Commonwealth Games commemorative stamps on October 03, 2010, Indian Postal Department took initiative to print postage stamps in that new Indian rupee symbol was used. The then Finance Minister, Pranab Mukherjee told in budget speech on February 28, 2011 that all coins to be issued in future would have incorporation of new sign being adopted recently. Circulation of coins in 1, 2, 5, and 10 rupees denomination having new symbol for rupee is in practice. New rupee sign was already incorporated in Rs. 10, 100, 500 and 1000 currency notes by January 2012. It is also incorporated in currency note denominations of Rs. 20 and 50 by April 12, 2012 for the full-fledged use.

Unicode

Unicode Technical Committee had the acceptance of proposed code position U+20B9 on August 10, 2010. Encoded in the Unicode 6.0 it had the character rather than existing character U+20A8 for the ₨ rupee sign indicating HTML: &#8360 that would remain still available as generic rupee sign used.

First operating which had the default support to Indian rupee system, Ubuntu created history. Its 10.10 version offered best support to the new symbol which is ultimate and awesome. A contributor added its Ubuntu font for excellent usage.

Codenamed Lovelock, this rupee symbol is effectively added in Fedora 15 for perfect application.

Microsoft took an initiative on May 18, 2011 through releasing new update to Windows Server 2008, Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 R2 operating systems that were added make best support to the rupee symbol adopted recently. Such updates are meant for support in font and other options like keyboard and locale changes etc. It hardly takes any worth for alt code text using due to the introduction of new Windows updates for the purpose of effective use of Indian Rupee symbol - Alt 8377 usage.

The rupee symbol with iOS 5 has additional support from Apple Inc.