Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | February 2008 12 we estimate that it will generate business in the region of Rs 25000 crore (US$6.37 billion) in five to ten years. Of this, 5% (Rs1250 billion) will accrue to the government by way of taxes,” says Amar Sinha of Pan India Network Infravest, a company that runs the Playwin lottery brand. Playwin is the creation of Subhash Chandra, the media owner who also set up India’s first home grown satellite channel Zee TV. In exchange for its licence, Playwin has guaranteed to the Indian government to give a proportion of its revenues to social projects. “This money can be used to fund social sector projects in the fields of education, healthcare and thewelfare of senior citizens,” adds Mr Sinha. “Upper end players have deep pockets and the potential for the government to earn revenue is tremendous. This can only go up over the years,” says an upbeat Mr Sinha. Spending power People in the wealthier parts of India certainlynowhave the luxuryof sparemoney for discretionary spending—unthinkable only a generation ago for all but a lucky few landowners, industrialists and higher professionals. India’s middle class—those with annual disposable incomes between US$4,380 and US$21,890—has more than doubled to 50 million in the past decade, according to McKinsey & Co., the New York- based consulting firm. At least a small part of that discretionary spending seems to be going not just on innovations such as Tata Motors’ new Rs100,000 (US$2,500) town car, but on unregulated,unlicensed andmostly untaxed, sin. The problem with the moral hazard argument as far as gaming is concerned is that vice including prostitution and drug taking have been an ever present if scarcely acknowledged part of Indian society for centuries, in common with most human cultures. And young middle class Indians in citiessuchasMumbaiarenowregularlyusing cannabis, Ecstasy and amphetamines just like their counterparts in theWest, according to interviews with club goers broadcast recently on the BBCWorld Service. ManoharParrikaristheBJPpoliticianwho as Goa’s chief minister in 1999 sanctioned the first and so far only casino cruise ship licensed to open its tables for businesswithin India’s territorial waters. He told Inside Asian Gaming that another argument sometimes heard in political circles—that gambling is somehow ‘un-Indian’—is risible. “Look at all the references to gambling in the Mahabharata [considered India’s greatest epic poem],” was Mr Parrikar’s Market Outlook Casino Goa