Adieu चवन्नी

Today India has officially relegated its चवन्नी's as useless bits of small change

On 18th May 2011 RBI announced the retirement of the good old 25 Paisa coin. The retirement comes into effect from 30th June 2011 (The day of writing the post)

The notice is available in the RBI website (you can follow this link)

Though decimalization happened about half a century back, 25 paisa were always known and will continue to be fondly remembered as the ..... चवन्नी

So the logical question is - When will अठन्नी go ? ....

We can come to an approximate time by reasonable deduction - here's one flow of reason ....
- अठन्नी would go at that time when the value represented by अठन्नी becomes too small for people to care about it .... we now need to know the value below which people generally don't care to discriminate... And it's here चवन्नी 's retirement will serve as a good benchmark... So, after putting 2 and 2 together - अठन्नी will (most probably) go when its value is equal to that of today's चवन्नी

... or in other words when the price levels doubles (and money's value halves)

... Assuming a conservative inflation rate of 7% this is going to happen in about 12 years from now .... sometime in the year 2023 ..

So in 2023 अठन्नी will (most likely) become useless and Indian currency will be staring at an interesting crossroad ... one of it's two units of measuring money (rupee and paisa) will become useless ...

We will be left with only Rupee ...

At that point government would have many options ...

One would be to introduce higher value units ... say a Mohur or Asharfi ... with one of Mohur/Asarfi equal to 15 (traditional) or 100 (plausible) or 1000 (my reco) Rupees ...

Another option would be to come out with a New Rupee and Paise which will be about 100 times the value of current Rupee and Paisa .... This option is very likely to cause a lot of confusion ...

Third, and most rational, option would be to do nothing .... and just let Rupee continue as the sole unit of Indian money ....