Why so many different coins?

An interesting topic came up in today's tea-time chat with my colleagues. It all started when the tea shop vendor hesitated to take the new 10 rupees coin. Not having any other cash we had to convince him for a few minutes and finally he took it though a little bit reluctantly. I don’t blame him, it was a Friday and my friends and I were dressed in our weekly ragged casuals which made us look all the more suspicious.

 But anyways in an effort to forget the damage caused to our egos, we discussed about the government and even better – the RBI and about how many different coins they have introduced in the last few years. I had been outside India for the better part of the last three years and had missed to witness the release of many of these coins. 

The more recently minted 1 and 2 rupee(s) coins are really funny; with some really smooth hand gestures imprinted in them; gestures that are more commonly used by people to indicate that they would be using the bathroom to do the one or the two.

 Apart from embarrassments such as the one that happened to us tea-shop owner, different kinds of coins for the same denominations would only make it difficult for people who are visually impaired to keep track of. I really do not know what would cause the RBI to mint such different coins in a short span of time.