Market Making in Punjab Lotteries: Regulation and Mutual Dependence

Abstract

It is easy to find lottery shops in Punjab, India. Large, overhead signs say “Punjab State Lottery” in Hindi and/or Punjabi scripts (Figure 11.1). But the products these shops sell are more varied than their signs suggest. The Punjab state lottery (PSL) acts as a front. The main business of these shops is the selling tickets from the lotteries of several northeastern states and the illegal lotteries that operate using their organization and infrastructure. Regulations and the business organization they foster have made the PSL, the northeastern states lotteries, and illegal lotteries unexpectedly dependent on one another. As they vie for market share they must also share the market. If any lottery drove another out of the market, its own business would collapse. The key to understanding this is to see how variably regulated practices entangle to make the lottery market. The differences in regulation within the lottery market could be characterized in terms of the distinction between formal and informal, “representing bureaucracy and popular self-organization” (Hart 2006, 2008). As Keith Hart argues, the formal–informal distinction, while questionable, has its uses. However, in this article, I avoid binary characterizations of differential market regulations such as formal– informal and legal–illegal for two reasons. First, the institutional agents, targets, and practices of regulation vary considerably within what we might call the formal or legal lottery