The government is reportedly holding a public competition for a symbol design for the rupee. Unlike the rupee, the US dollar ($), the Japanese yen (?), the British pound sterling (?) and many other currencies have internationally identifiable symbols. The finance ministry is looking to catch up and zoom in on a symbol that represents the historical and cultural ethos of our country. On aesthetic and financial grounds, this sounds like a pretty straightforward goal. Plus India?s search, via a 21st century free competition, for a currency symbol should be a lot more straightforward than that of other major countries.
Consider the euro, the most modern and wide-ranging currency experiment. Defying sceptics who predicted an early demise at the hands of internecine battles, it turned a healthy ten this new year. But its symbol?s origin remains mired in controversy. When the then European Commission president presented the world with the euro symbol in 1997, saying that a team of four people had created the design as ?a combination of the Greek epsilon, as a sign of the weight of European civilisation, an E for Europe, and the parallel lines crossing through stand for the stability of the euro,? someone watching TV at an old people?s home in Germany sprang up in surprise.
Crying, ?Look, that?s my E, my E!? That was Arthur Eisenmenger, who claimed that he had created the euro symbol a quarter century earlier, when he was the chief graphic designer for what was then the European Economic Community. Adding weight to his claims are the facts that the official design team remained nameless and that he is the acknowledged creator of the EU flag.
Moving on to the greenback, so named after the ink used to colour it, the currency?s symbol has an even more disputed genesis. Read Macbeth: ?That now Sweno, the Norway?s king, craves composition; Nor would we deign him burial of his men till he disbursed at Saint Colme?s inch 10,000 dollars to our general use.? With a first recorded performance in 1611, Shakespeare?s play testifies to the term?s usage predating the Pilgrim Fathers setting sail for America in 1620. The dollar?s symbol is more recent than its name, but even theories about the origins of the former are varied. To name a couple of extreme positions, Ayn Rand claimed that the dollar sign was a symbol of her entire nation, its free economy and free mind while others claim that it is derived from the shackles worn by slaves, or how slave-owners abbreviated money in their account books. More mainstream explanations take the dollar sign to be derived from the sign of the Spanish peso that was widely in circulation when the US decided on the dollar as its basic unit of currency in 1782.
As for perhaps the oldest currency currently circulated, uses of the ? to reference the pound sterling date back to long before there was a UK, to the ancient kingdom of Merica. The Japanese yen and the Chinese renminbi actually share the Latinised symbol ?. In the former case, the Meiji government introduced the yen to mimic the European monetary system in 1872. In the latter instance, the renminbi was first issued just before the communists took over the mainland in 1949.
If the currencies that hold most of the world?s reserves have complicated stories, there is no reason to expect that selecting a sign for the rupee will not be taxing. Cynics may wonder about the need to commission a unified symbol when we have toddled along without one for eons. But this cynical paradigm fails to account for the soft power of icons and emblems. Concerns about slumping exports, a rising deficit, falling portfolio investments and so on are all too real. But India is still the second-fastest growing economy in the world. Its global presence is still expanding, as is that of the rupee alongside. Beyond strengthening a national connect, a new currency symbol will be a confidence signal.
?renuka.bisht@expressindia.com
