Vanishing act Disappearing coins

IT seems ages ago. A bottle half a liter of DDC milk used to cost five rupees. A bottle of coke in the sizzling summer heat set you back by just seven rupees. And the famous Orange Balls would come four to a rupee. That was 15 years ago. Since, galloping inflation has meant that those prices have multiplied many times over. Gone are the days you could take a Suka (25 paisa) to fetch an Orange Ball. In fact, there is no Suka at all. The mohor (50 paise) will soon disappear as the cost of minting fails to cover the face-value of raw material. The coins of Re1 and Rs 2 denominations, it is safe to assume, will be in circulation for some time yet. But they might soon be on Nepal Rastra Bank’s chopping blocks as well. Signs are ominous. In most shops and department stores around Nepal, the growing trend is to hand out a chocolate or two instead of the tinkling coins in return, which the customers don’t take too well to, especially men who don’t have big handbags to drop them in.



As The Economist noted about the phasing out of Canadian penny recently, “The penny is just the latest in a series of coins to disappear after centuries of use. The British farthing was worth just a quarter of an old penny, or one-960th of a pound, but it still lasted almost 700 years before it disappeared from circulation in 1960.” Imagining people going shopping with coins worth ‘one-960th’ of the lowest denomination in the current currency denominations is hard to imagine, although we do occasionally get to see people ferrying cartloads of money to buy a bar of soap in countries like Zimbabwe which last year witnessed three-digit inflation every day. In Nepal, looking at the now out of circulation 1 paisa coin issued during the reign of King Mahendra, people who came of age at time wax nostalgic about the muri of beaten rice or a big chunk of unprocessed salt which could be fetched with it.



Along with the monarchy and the status of the only Hindu country in the world, also gone are the khadgas, the khurukris, the royal crown, the cow, and all the other symbols that characterized the erstwhile kingdom. The sudden disappearance of these once potent symbols of Nepali nationalism troubles some. But for most Nepalis, the vanishing act of coins of small denominations is a sober reminder of how little their lives have improved in the last decade or so. Although average per capita income of a Nepali increased form US $ 259 in 2001 to US $566 in 2010, with annual inflation averaging 10 percent, any benefits from the increased salaries and wages were wiped out. The price of half a liter milk has gone up to Rs 25; a bottle of coke costs the same; and Orange Balls, no longer the favorite among young kids now that there are much tastier options, now come a rupee a pop. As they say: The more things change, the more they stay the same.

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