NUMISMATIC VOCABULARY WORDS: CRORE AND LAKH

I was interested to read about India’s attempt to clean up its banknotes by prohibiting the addition of graffiti and other messages to its paper money. Curiously, the article suggested that bank employees are the biggest offenders, although it did not make clear why they are so prone to writing on banknotes. It also mentioned that an unknown Kashmiri separatist group has been stamping separatist slogans on Indian currency and claims to have “stamped currency worth Rs 30 crores in the last four months.”

I was pretty confident that “Rs” stood for Rupees, but I had to re-read the sentence a few times to make sure I was seeing the word “crores”, and then I had to go look that up. For those E-Sylum readers as uneducated as I am, here is what Wikipedia says:

Got that? I’m not sure I do. Not only do I need to remember a new word (two new words if I want to be able to convert a “crore” into “lakh”), but I also need to learn a new way to write the number 10,000,000.

In any case, you correctly noted that “such a policy in the U.S would apply to a wide swath of overstamped notes such as ‘Where's George?’ notes and various political slogans, like ‘Obama Rocks’ ". I am sure that there are a few crores of “Where’s George” notes floating around the US and beyond, and although the “Obama Rocks” notes are not quite as ubiquitous, there must be a lakh or two of those in circulation as well.

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see: INDIA'S CLEAN BANKNOTE POLICY (www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v16n34a28.html)

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