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Another stupid ban

Of all the stupid ideas in the world, this is perhaps the stupidest. The banning of lotteries mooted by the Union government.

The reason is simple. The ban is hypocritical and unjust. It will achieve exactly the opposite of what it sets out to do. For it will drive underground what is happening before our eyes and which can be far more effectively controlled by simpler means than outlawing it. What is worse, the ban hits at the heart of our democratic society by treating different people differently for doing exactly the same thing. Gambling. Simply because they belong to different social strata.

What is a lottery? And why, for heaven's sake, does the state want to interfere in it? The political argument is that lotteries encourage gambling and gambling destroys homes, families, societies. I am sure it does. But so do many other things which we happily turn a blind eye to.

Cigarettes, for instance. Has the government banned the manufacture and sale of cigarettes? No. It has not banned the manufacture and sale of cigarettes even though there is now absolute and conclusive medical evidence to prove that cigarettes kill. That they too destroy homes, families, societies.

The government has not only not banned the manufacture and sale of cigarettes; it has deliberately put in place weak and effete laws that allow cigarette manufacturers to openly flaunt their products through the print and television media, including the government's own national broadcaster.

What is worse, cigarette manufacturers are promoting their products through hugely popular games like cricket and getting dimwit movie stars to sell the stupid idea to millions of ill-informed people that it is a wonderfully macho thing to smoke. The idiots who fall for this argument do not know that even the Marlboro man (the cigarette industry's ultimate icon) eventually got laid by cancer.

By banning smoking on buses and planes and in a few public places, by compelling cigarette companies to print a one-line warning in microscopic type size on their packs, the government has achieved nothing. For these companies are now openly using huge backlit hoardings and putting hundreds of millions into newspaper ads and television to lure millions of adolescents all over India to try out smoking. This huge ad spend also helps to neutralise (if not silence) the media. While the tax revenues are so large that the government keeps its moral posturing on hold and even encourages 100 per cent foreign entities to come in and join the gang rape.

So what if cigarettes kill. So what if they are the single biggest reason for cancer in this country. So what if they put a huge burden on our already cash-strapped nation and its vastly overstretched health-care and hospitalisation facilities.

The cigarette companies are too big, too well organised, too ruthless a criminal force to care for what they are doing to India. And of course they have too much money to spread around, to keep their ugly, killing business alive and legal. While the poor Nigerian students who peddle cheap drugs on the streets of Mumbai get picked up and hammered by the cops and jailed for long terms. For they do not have the same patronage and the same amount of cash to distribute. That is why their business is illegal and criminal. While the cigarette companies get away with murder in broad daylight.

Yet both are in an identical business. Selling death. While one gets away scot-free, the other is hunted down and punished. Even though far more people die from smoking in India than doing drugs.

As for killing, so for gambling. There are many forms of gambling in our society, but those which the rich and famous indulge in are treated as perfectly legal. It is only those which the poor patronise that are outlawed and treated as criminal activity. So matka ends up as a crime while horse-racing is a wonderful sport. It is covered by all the newspapers, funded by corporates, endorsed by celebrities. Its tipsters are heroes. Not villains. While the poor matka operator is hunted down by the police. He is a criminal simply because his clients are not dressed in Armani suits, do not speak English and would not know how to uncork a bottle of champagne after winning.

If gambling is politically incorrect, how come so many states have in recent times licensed casinos? Most of the Goan five-star hotels already have them. Madhya Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir are following suit. Hotels elsewhere are also clamouring for them. They have become the new destinations for the rich and famous. And, yet, the humble lottery ticket is a crime. Why? Because it offers dreams to the poor. Dreams of sudden riches. Do not casinos do the same? Do not races do the same? Do not stock markets do the same?

If it is not socially desirable to encourage people to have dreams of getting rich quickly, why do we allow them to invest in stocks and shares? Why do we allow them to put money on the races? Why are we allowing hotel owners to start casinos and put up those one-armed bandits that have robbed millions of people all over the world of their hard-earned cash? We all know that gambling attracts the underworld, it nurtures crime and creates a miasma of sleaze around it. Yet we turn a blind eye to that. We want to only hit upon those poor middle-class boys who sell lottery tickets on the streets of Mumbai and earn a small livelihood from what is essentially a hawking profession. Next to them are those selling application forms for public issues, but no one dare touch them because their business is legit, it is protected by the corporate sector. By the Harshad Mehtas of the world.

Tell me one thing: I know the Internet is a wonderful thing and I know India is going places because of its information technology expertise, but those who are playing around with Internet stocks on our bourses today, are they not gambling? Are they not gambling over what the future holds? Was Satyam not gambling when it picked up the Indiaworld stock for nearly Rs 500 crore when the company's turnover is barely a crore and its profits a pittance? Was Hutchinson not gambling when it picked up Analjit Singh's holdings for over Rs 500 crore when Maxtouch is so deep in the red? Are Coke and Pepsi not gambling when they invest more and more money into their Indian subsidiaries that continue to bleed hundreds of crores every year?

Is gambling such a crime that you need to outlaw it in a world where every winner is in some way or the other a gambler?

We are all gambling when we invest in the future. Sometimes we win. More often we lose. For the odds are always stacked against us. Given the health of some of our public-sector banks, even banking your money is a gamble today. So why deprive thousands of poor youngsters of their livelihood by picking on lotteries only? Tax them harder if you want. To make the point that gambling is not socially desirable. But banning lotteries is wrong. For it punishes only the poor for a crime that all of us commit all the time.

Pritish Nandy

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