Indian Currency News

The currency battles are starting again. A few years ago, it was the two rupee note problem when everybody tried to do away with the old and tattered Two rupee and Five rupee notes until the coins were minted. Then again was the question of tendering the exact change, as most signboards outside government offices told us to do. That was the time when vendors told their daily customers to "come again another day" to collect the small change. Some shopkeepers went on to offer items in bulk after pricing them in rounded up figures. Bus conductors made hay, asking either for perfect change or requesting passengers to forget about the change. All that had changed in the past few years. Coins were being minted in plenty. Sometimes people changed their coins into currency notes, as they were sure of getting small change whenever they wanted. It is still a bother to get thousand rupee notes changed, but that is only due to the higher risk factor involved. All in the entire currency situation was peaceful. Now the battles are starting again.
This time it is the fifty paisa coins. Go to any small shop for a cup of tea and there is a very high chance that you will be handed two fifty paisa coins instead of a single rupee (or multiples thereof). The reason for this is the prediction that such coins will soon become obsolete. The idea isn’t baseless, as there are very few things that a single fifty paisa coin can buy. The coins themselves are often dented and sometimes rusted too. They are necessary though, because after the recalling of the twenty five paisa coins, there are no other denominations smaller than the Rupee-the national denomination. Imagine that, the national denomination being the smallest available. That’s pretty rare.