Last month, the Indian rupee got its very own symbol, and with it the bragging rights that go with being an exclusive member of a privileged group of currencies like the US Dollar, Japanese Yen and British Pound.
The new symbol is a stylised combination of both the Devnagiri ‘Ra’ (the script in which Hindi is written) and the Roman ‘R’ and has been designed by D Udaya Kumar, a postgraduate student of the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.
The symbol won’t be printed on coins or currency notes, but it will be included in the Unicode Standard and the world's major scripts so that it can be easily used in both print and electronic media.
The government said the sign will be adopted within six months domestically and within 18-24 months worldwide. Already, most Indian publications have been using it, and there’s certainly been some excitement that our own rupee sign is an indication that our economy has made it into the big league.