Visit to the Indian Government Mint – Fort, Mumbai 

YFLO in this month of August gave its members a once in a lifetime opportunity of touring the Mumbai Mint, which is one of Mumbai’s highest security structures and was offered for public visit in a group for the first time ever. The Mumbai mint dates back to the 17th Century and is known to produce 750 coins at time, which is 6 million coins daily and that ranges to 760 billion coins yearly. Today the Mint is regulated as a company under the ministry of finance. In 1863 Col Ballard became the Master of Mumbai Mint. He was the most famous British Master of this Mint. He reclaimed the land from the sea which is now known as Ballard Estate, the ay name given to perpetuate his memory. Today there are two printing security presses at Mumbai and Nashik attached with this mint. The attendees were taken in groups of ten into the Mint and the tour lasted a little more than an hour. The tour gave us a picture of how coins are made and distributed after securing the required gold equivalent to the coins. The coins are passed to the Reserve Bank of India at a price above the face value making a profit for the finance ministry. The mint ‘s activities not just include coining but making of medals, weights and measures, gold processing and refining and to holds an assay department to furnish the chemical composition reports on products at every stage of minting of coins and check the correctness of the coins made by mint. The same helps to detect counterfeits. In olden days merchants use to come to mint to get their gold ornaments molded into gold bricks and cards. In 1997 the Mumbai mint held gold up to 40 million which was sold out to the RBI. Now the mint holds limited gold. Ms. Sranvanya Rao, our chairperson called upon Mr. S. N. Lahiri, General Manager, IG Mint, Mumbai who had specially come from Nashik to spend a few hours with our group. He currently handles both the Nashik and Mumbai mint. He was on the committee headed by Ms. Usha Thorat which changed all the coins of our country on 8th July, 2011 with a texture on the coins for blind people to distinguish between the different denominations of coins. YFLO members were one of the first citizens to see these coins and the process of this excellent initiative keeping the Indian blind in mind. He gave us a special talk on security documents of our country and communicated facts on passports, visas, currency stamp papers and stamps which we were never aware of. 1) We were informed that the best jewelers in Mumbai claim to have 22 carat gold but those are false and only the mint can guarantee gold of 22 carat. 2) He gave us the most interesting fact that soon we will all hold electronic machine readable passports. They would have the entire history of an individual embedded in an invisible antenna embedded in the last page of the passport. The pages would be poly carbonated. It will hold Bio metrics information and make immigration even faster. These passports are already held by our diplomats including the Prime minister, President and parliament members. The Mumbai Mint being on the track of automation has not recruited for the past 30 years and holds a total staff of approximate 100 employees as compared to before when it held approximate 2500 employees. Despite the heavy rains all attendees had a wonderful time and were so intrigued by these facts that and the session had to be extended by approximately an hour to accommodate the Q & A session. Finally the event was concluded by a vote of thanks by Ms. Priyanka Dabriwala.The attendees departed after a rare view of the Original Fort wall which divides the navy and the mint, as in olden days the mint was used to house gold and silver for our country. All attendees were highly appreciative of this YFLO endeavor and were extremely appreciate.