When I was a kid, I used to see a huge crowd outside some shops, many eager and generous people gathered on a place and waiting for something but that time I was unable to understand what is going around. For me it should have been a sweet house or a toy house, if it attracts that much crowd. Those shops were lottery shops and people gathered around shops were those, who were waiting for results to be announced. After some time government declared lottery illegal in most of the states. While Horse racing and share market, which have taken shape of gamble now a days are operational and lower income or daily wage earner can’t participate in it.
Government's decision was appropriate because lottery had an unfavourable consequence as most of the gambles have, it attracted so many people from lower income group and mostly daily wage earners, who wanted to earn a huge sum of money in gamble and solve all their daily problem but unfortunately they ended up with increasing their problems with losing their daily wages in lottery but the question is - can't we implement lottery system in such a way that it doesn't ruin one's house but help country's economy.
I strongly feel that anything uncontrolled is harmless, even if it is money or success or talent. Same is the case with lottery system as well. If people are giving their whole salary for gambling and lottery then it will certainly not give good results.
So, how can we implement it in a controlled manner? Just to give a rough idea, if a person earns 25000 per month he/she can easily spend 500 or 600 rupees per month on these things or we can say this amount will not ruin his/her monthly budget but again how can we track that who is buying how much amount of tickets? the answer is PAN cards, they can work as monitoring one's lottery purchasing behaviour as well as help in getting one's identity related information.
Again, until we can't monitor lower income group, problem will not solve. So, for those who doesn't have PAN cards or do not come under income-tax range, one limit can be decided let's say we have tickets of 10, 20 50, 100, 500 denomination. Then people with income under minimum tax barrier can get certain limit of certain denomination tickets for example at max 40 rs. ticket in one week after showing due identity proves (Ration cards, as they can work for monitoring these activities as well).
Now, how will it help in improving country's economy? Government earn a decent amount as transaction tax from shares purchase/sell in BSE and NSE. If lottery also gets a well-structured and transparent transaction model, it can also flourish as a big market parallel to share market. Another favourable consequence may be reduction in black money and declaration of income and more tax to government. Normally small and medium business men don't file accurate income tax and show just a minimum amount of income, so that they can save their taxes but if Lottery system needs person's PAN or ITR to access their limit of purchasing tickets, this may encourage them to show their income in some or other form.
And now, being a telecom guy it is my duty to provide some telecom related solutions as well. One thing checking identity and other is monitoring person's ticket purchasing behaviour. So, for these two requirements Mobile apps will provide good support as the person who owns the SIM will be an authorized person to purchase tickets and that App will monitor their lottery tickets purchasing behaviour as well.
Vishwa R. Nigam
Telecom Market Research
