Not everybody can be a Lakhan Yadav, the 45-year-old Madhya Pradesh farmer, who spent ₹200 on a diamond stake and found a ₹60 lakh winner. And not everyone can be Yadav in the manner in which he is dealing with his win—after a celebratory mobike spend, he will use the fixed deposit (FD) route to park the money and educate his four children. Not everybody finds a jackpot, and fewer still find the equality of mind to deal with the jackpot when it is indeed found.
The search for a jackpot is not restricted to poor farmers leasing diamond mines or those who buy lottery tickets that sustains a ₹50,000-crore-a-year industry, it extends to white-collar professionals who also dream of that one punt that will get them rich overnight. Over the entire lockdown period I would have done at least 30 webinars of groups between 30 and 1,000 people at a time. Many groups were kind enough to fill a small questionnaire that mapped their money worries. The worries were the usual mix of too many goals, too little money, confusing marketplace, trust deficit for older people and too heavy lifestyle costs, and student loans for the younger cohorts. International groups of young adults almost always had issues of credit card loans and very high student loans to repay. While they ticked all the boxes of worrying about goals and spends, some of their questions during the webinar were focused on finding that one great deal or product that would be the winner.