If you wish to experience time travel across more than 2,500 years of the history of money in the Indian subcontinent, a trip to the the Reserve Bank of India’s Monetary Museum is all you need. Inaugurated in 2004 by the then president of India, Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, the museum is divided into various sections, chronicling the economy in the land before and after it was known as the Republic of India. Watch what else is making news While schoolchildren make up most of the footfall, the minority is split between economy enthusiasts and collegians. The history of the items is written in English and Hindi, but it is the caricatures that simplify the economy concepts for the average visitors. The first section is named ‘Ideas, Concepts & Curiosities’, and introduces the visitor to how money originated and evolved. One of the main features in this section is a display of coins of 49 different shapes and sizes, from as early as the 4th century to the 20 century. The displays include the Bent Bar coins found in India to the knife money found in China, the bracelet money of West Africa and the Bullet money of Thailand. Yellow arrows on the floor lead you to the section of Coins, which date back to as early as the 600 BC. According to museum officials, the earliest documented coins of India are silver punch-marked coins, which were made by punching symbols with the history of that period. The next section is India’s paper money, where besides the various banknotes that prevailed and their respective tales, there are two cartoon sketches explaining the concepts of banking and bills of exchange in a simple manner. With each banknote have a unique anecdote, one of the most intriguing is when paper money was often posted separately in two halves to prevent theft. The recipient then pasted the two parts, which had identical serial numbers, together to redeem it. The yellow arrows further point to a wall that tells the uncommon tale behind the tree in the logo of the Reserve Bank of India, where the observations of the then governor and his reasoning for tilting the tree behind the tiger are displayed. A wall that most visitors often miss before entering the last section is the one that displays banknotes printed by the RBI for Pakistan post-independence. One of the last walls before the exit door displays pictures of all the RBI governors, except the incumbent Urjit Patel. A blank space is waiting while Patel’s image is being finalised, to be hung right below a smiling Raghuram Rajan.
