Mis-Marketing by the Dream Merchants: The Case of State Lotteries

The paper pleads for a total review of state operated lotteries in India. The idea of state run lotteries came with the laudable objective of mobilizing surplus money in the society by exploiting the gambling instinct and employing it for social good. In the process of translating it into practice, however, the whole purpose has got distorted. Today, we are crowded with state run lotteries that are tapping the poor segment which, in fact, needs to be protected and leaving out other richer segments that need to be tapped to bring about social equity and justice. Further, the undue competition has resulted into excessive and wasteful marketing expenditures with little, if any, net gain from the whole effort. There is, therefore, an urgent need to have fundamental rethinking on this whole issue. There is need to design a lottery that would specifically serve the upper middle, high income and the affluent sections of our society. There is also a need to entrust the job to professional marketers rather than leaving it to the bureaucracy. Finally, there is a need to consider organising such lottery at the central government level which will minimize wasteful marketing expenditures due to excessive competition and, in fact, use the funds for schemes of social value.