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Journalism of Courage
PUNE, March 31: While local Congress leaders welcomed the Central Government’s move to initiate a ban on lotteries, it was bad news for the 40,000-odd retailers in the city who make a living from selling dreams to the masses.
A pall of gloom descended on the men who sell luck and lucre as cheap as Rs 2 a ticket but hope continued to loom large that Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray would bail them out, as promised in his fiery outburst in the media.
It’s a business thriving on hope. Hope of the labour class. Of those who pray to strike it rich with one stroke of luck. For them, the Central Government decision to ban lotteries makes no sense.
“Forty thousand of our men who work as lottery agents will be rendered jobless if the ban actually comes about,” said a worried Satish Chopra of the Pune Zilla Lottery Vikreta Sangh. Besides them, the axe would also fall on the ten courier services they were using, the printing press, the paper mills and the thousands of people who work as across-the-counter salespersons, he added.
“The Government will have to provide us with jobs if it decides to ban lotteries,” thundered an upset Prakash Balasaheb Apang, owner of Prakash Lottery. Apang has been in the lottery business for 18 years. A ban will not just spell unemployment for him but also for the staff of 25 that works for him, he says.
While retailers and distributors are emphasising on the fear of being rendered jobless, the other angle is the money that lotteries bring in for the State Government. Rough estimates say the State Government would rake in a stupendous Rs 15 to 20 crores as sales tax from lottery sales in 1998-99. The figure rested at Rs 8 crores last year.
Pune itself has about 12 retailers and 12 mandies — something like a one-stop department store where lottery tickets from any of the eight popular State-run lotteries can be available. Maharashtra Lottery is 30 years old and has tickets priced between Rs 2 to Rs 10. Before that gamblers were spending on the popular Kerala lottery. Mohan Joshi, city Congress president, welcomed the move. “Lotteries have ruined many families.
They are a bane for the younger generation,” he said, quipping that Thackeray had personal interests in mind when he opposed the move. City BJP secretary Vijay Kale, also welcomed the move, adding that besides the middle-class household, school and college students as well as petty labourers were wasting hard-earned money on lottery tickets.
Krishna Patil, at a lottery stall near Kolhapur railway station, said the decision will not have much effect.“If they ban officials lotteries, unofficial ones will continue to thrive. See what happened to the government’s much hyped banning of matka, it still continues to lure people. Lotteries are much better, if you buy one ticket, the result will be declared after a week. One does not have to spend daily, as those who spend on matka.”
Bhagvan Walveker, operator of `Kapil Lottery Mandi’, one of the biggest lottery centres in Kolhapur, said the ban will deprive hundreds of self-employed lottery agents in the remote corners of district Till a final decision is taken street urchins, college students, retired Government servants, labourers — men, women and children — continue to throng the poor man’s dream merchants — who sell get-rich-quick dreams.
