𝐀 𝐥𝐨𝐭 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐥𝐨𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐤𝐞𝐭𝐬
My Grandpa’s table always had many lottery tickets.
He was not a seller, but a sincere and committed buyer of lottery tickets for decades in the 1970s and 80s. Like the present-day share market trader / investor who is glued to the screen to check the share prices, he used to look at the newspapers searching a few ‘matching numbers’ holding the lottery tickets in the other hand. That was part of his routine.
Kerala State lottery which started with a price of One Rupee and first prize of Rs 50000 in the year 1967 has become a major revenue earner for the state. Kerala is the first State to launch a government-run lottery in India. In the last 59 years, Kerala lottery has created many millionaires from the ‘have-nots’ of the population.
In the past, there were incidents of grabbing the winning lottery tickets by chasing the poor men who won them by the ‘rich’ men. Those who had stacked huge ‘unaccounted money’ buy those winning tickets paying huge premium as per the advice of some ingenious tax practitioners. That was a rudimentary method of money laundering engaged by a few big tax evaders in India. A few of them who were super ‘lucky’ year after year were caught by the Incomer Tax Department as they found them to be reporting winning bumper prizes on a regular basis!
The turnover from lottery in the FY 2025-226 was around Rs 14000 Cr and the net profit for the government is estimated to be around 1100 Cr. Apart from this, Central Government earns around 31.2% of the prize money as Income Tax and Cess.
Kerala Lottery gives direct and indirect employment to over 2.5 lakh persons. 1% of the total turnover is kept as a welfare fund for the benefit of lottery agents and sellers. Most of the retail sellers who sell the tickets in the streets and bus stops are financially poor and some of them are differently abled. When we buy ticket from a lottery seller standing under the hot sun near traffic signals or bus stops, we are in fact financially supporting a family. For a lottery ticket priced at Rs 50, the last mile seller would get around Rs 6.
The decision to buy a lottery ticket stem from the aspiration to become rich. There are many who buy the lottery tickets regularly spending their wages and have been branded as ‘lottery addicts’. There is a view shared by some that the lottery should be banned stating that it is gambling. Most of the buyers of lottery are from the economically weaker sections of the society. When they do not have a livelihood to lead an aspirational life for themselves and their families and a way to clear their debts, they tend to try their luck.
The habit of buying lottery tickets in its present form is a less harmful addiction when compared to the habit of drinking and smoking. If governments happily earn money from the sale of alcohol and cigarettes, there is nothing wrong in earning money through lotteries. If lottery buying is gambling, the stock market trading indulged by lakhs of people (intra day or speculative trading within days) is also a type of gambling. However, lottery business run by the State in an organized, systematic and restrictive manner cannot be equated with harmful online gaming, gambling and betting which are illegal and exploitative.
While the above view is true for a State-run lottery, there is a menace of illegal lottery sales in many parts of the country. People have got cheated through such illegal lottery operations which are nothing but organized scamming. Do not try your luck with fraudsters.
"You gotta try your luck at least once a day, because you could be going around lucky all day and not even know it." — Jimmy Dean
(Please consider buying a ticket from one of these individual sellers when you take a drive in Kerala. It would help him, the government and many...)
𝓟𝓱𝓸𝓽𝓸: Taken near Perumbavoor, Kochi, Kerala. Met this wonderful seller of lottery ticket. He proved to himself that he is truly differently abled and assured the family the earnings by being productive, with dignity and satisfaction. He feels that he is working for the State and its people. (Proceeds of the Karunya lottery by the Govt of Kerala is exclusively for the health care of the less privileged.) It was a pleasure to have a brief interaction with him.
© Sibichen K Mathew
