5 Paise FAO

This piece was struck as part of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization coin program, which recruited member nations to issue specially designated coinage bearing agricultural themes tied to FAO development campaigns. India participated repeatedly throughout the 1970s, and the 1976 issue falls within the "Food for All" initiative promoted that decade. Aluminium was the only practical choice — by the mid-1970s, the intrinsic value of cupro-nickel had made small-denomination coinage economically indefensible to produce.

KM#18 and KM#19 are frequently conflated in dealer inventories; the distinction rests on the FAO designation itself, not the physical type.