Design a Symbol for Rupee

I visited the website of Ministry of Finance to have a look at the Monthly Economic Report, but what i came across was something more interesting!
The Ministry has began a public competition to formulate a design for the Indian Rupee. We do use abbreviations like Rs or INR (Indian Rupee), but unlike major currencies we don't have a symbol.

The contest, open for all resident Indian, closes at 1300 hours on 15th April 2009.. For more details click here.

When i googled more about the competition, I came across mixed views from international community. Some feel it to be obvious indication of emergence of a new player in the global economy, while others blamed the competition format. It's the same route that Russia went down in the 1990s, in its search, so far unsuccessful, for a symbol to represent the rouble.
There were also many doubts raised about the implementation of the symbol. According to one estimate, when the euro was introduced in 1999 it cost Europe's biggest companies more than $50bn to update their computer systems to deal with the changeover.

But I am sure we would work our way out and try to come up with a cheaper technique to upgrading our systems and codes.
One suggestion to all people: focus on graphics and technical application as well. Try to understand and analyze how would it look on the web, keyboards, LED Screens and even on mobile phones.

Cheap n Chalu ;)

I remember months back most blogs and newspaper editorial spoke about Rupee appreciation. Though most exporters were cursing the heavy impact it had on their bottom lines, common people like me were feeling proud about it. There were a few economists who even predicted that the trend would continue and rupee will go very strong. In term of figures, the predictions were that the dollar would soon come down to 30 rupees. But now again dollar stands high and is over 42 rupees.
Now, coming to the actual reason behind this entire introduction. This is from a conversation I had with my sister last night. While watching SRK’s Kya Aap Paachvi Paas Se Tez Hain, my sister asked me is the currency of Britain. I replied though all European nationals have come up with a common currency called Euro, pounds are still very prevalent in UK. Then she asked me about the exchange rate, I told her that a pound is almost 83 Indian rupees.
After sometime a weird idea struck my mind. We know that a pound can be further classified as 100 penny, so penny is the basic unit the basic unit of monetary exchange in UK and similar we know that 100 cents make a dollar. But as I see these days, the basic currency exchange in India is a rupee. In most parts of the country I learnt that all denominations smaller than 1 Re have become extinct now. (I can never forget the day at Hyderabad when a beggar at one of the traffic junctions refused to accept smaller denominations of Rupee, though she readily accept the same a one rupee coin but not two 50 paise coins)
So now scaling down the exchange factor, a rupee is eqivalent to 2.4 cents or 1.2 penny. Now, what should we conclude from this?? Our basic monetary unit is pretty stronger than that in developed nations like US and UK. Interesting isn’t it??