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Karnataka plans to start electronic lottery

M D Riti in Bangalore

Pay the money, press a button and win a prize. Soon, you will no longer need to go to Las Vegas to play electronic lotteries. Instead, you can just go to Bangalore, or any other part of Karnataka, to a lottery kiosk.

The Karnataka government is working on a scheme to introduce electronic lottery all over the state. According to state Information Technology secretary Vivek Kulkarni, 10,000 terminals will be set up all over at kiosks and cafes, for this purpose.

How exactly will the lottery system be made electronic?

"Basically, we will use the electronic medium to pick winners, register tickets and so on," explains Kulkarni.

"This will make it possible for more people to get prizes. The prizes will be of smaller amounts, of course, but there will be more of them."

The Karnataka government has drawn up the blueprint for an elaborately designed electronic lottery scheme. Kulkarni even went public with the bare bones of it in a seminar organised by a group of NGOs in Bangalore. The theme of the seminar was 'IT and social change'.

The focus of S M Krishna's government now is directed towards using IT to bring about big changes in the lives of the people of Karnataka, in cities as well as villages.

"Only 6 per cent of our population actually needs to work in agriculture," says Kulkarni. "But we have 60 per cent working on it now. All this can change through IT."

How does an electronic lottery project imply any kind of social change, you may well ask. Kulkarni explains that the project was part of a huge 'electronification' drive, which in turn is expected to generate a lot of jobs.

There will be no separate kiosks for the exclusive use of the lottery. "The same connections will also work as cyber cafes," says Kulkarni.

The Department of Small Savings and Lottery is handling the project. The department has already called for tenders for the setting up of the kiosks.

However, now, the Karnataka government has suddenly clammed up about this entire scheme. Neither the IT department nor the small savings department will talk about it all. The reason, they say, is that it is still premature.

However, the real reason appears to be the flak that the project is already drawing from some sections of the public. Especially, coming as it does close on the heels other proposals of Krishna like making low-proof liquor available at grocery stores.

"First, this government allowed online betting at the Bangalore Turf Club," says Bharatiya Janata Party MLA Suresh Kumar. "Now they want to make lotteries available at cyber cafes. What is this Congress government up to? I think they want to become the champions of all anti-social activities!"

Adds G Bekal, a retired police DCP: "During the Congress regime under Chief Minister Veerappa Moily, the government had moved to stop all lotteries, even the government-run ones. After all, a lottery is a pure game of chance, and as such, it does fall under the classification of gambling. The government should not support such things."

"One can always debate over the pros and cons of the lottery in general," says Kulkarni. "That is a different issue, and there are two sides to it. What we are saying is that since we do have a government-run lottery, let's improve it by making it electronic."

After this initial debate on the issue, the Karnataka government has now closed itself off and refuses to discuss the electronic lottery scheme any further just at present.

Questions like exactly how this system will run, how soon it will be implemented and how the cash transactions will be organised all remain in the air as of now.

Despite the opposition, it seems unlikely that the electronic lottery scheme will be shelved, as it fits in neatly with the government's attempt to place cyber kiosks in remote parts of the state and put the whole of Karnataka online.

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