Asian Window

Everyone knows about the illegal lottery business. Few know who runs it. In Tehelka, Shantanu Guha Ray uncovers Santiago Martin of Myanmar:

Every few nights, as a nation dreams, contract employees of Kolkata-based courier companies heave brown bags onto nondescript railway station platforms across Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. These jute sacks hold no prosaic cargo, but literally millions of lottery tickets worth hundreds of crores, each ticket a sultry — and illicit — promise of riches. Troops of young boys swarm onto these sacks; dividing their contents among themselves, they cycle off into the approaching dawn. That day — and every day — lottery tickets worth Rs 40 crore will be sold across India. Lotteries are legal in just 12 states and five Union territories; in the other states, tickets are clandestinely sold at nondescript tea stalls, cigarette shops and newspaper vends. Illegal lottery tickets account for a whopping 60 per cent — Rs 7,200 crore — of the Rs 13,000 crore gambled every year on lottery tickets.

Presiding over this illegal empire of eternal hope and callous numbers is Santiago Martin, 42, a Myanmarese whose interest in paper lotteries are perhaps as old as he is. The day Martin was born, his Yangon-based parents won a super lottery, getting $1,000. “He proved lucky for his parents,” says T Arumayagam, who worked with Martin in Arunachal Pradesh where lotteries are legal, before he shifted to Coimbatore. More:

Similar Posts:

• Parivaar politics
• Dalai Lama: Q&A
• America’s immigrants
• Botox could become terrorist tool
• Get out! Malaysia tells migrants. Again.