11 women split $1.2m lottery jackpot in India

In June, 11 women who work together as sanitation laborers in India pooled their money to buy a $3 lottery ticket because they could not afford the cost individually.

Last week, they won. The jackpot was $1.2 million, or more than $700,000 after taxes, an enormous sum for workers who spend their days collecting household waste and building public toilets.

Lottery drawings are famous feel-good stories because they make people rich overnight, but these winners might be among the most deserving in history. Most were in debt after taking out loans for medical treatment, their children’s education, dowries, or other essential expenses that they could not afford on a wage of roughly $3 a day.

Five of the winners also happen to be from social classes whose members were once deemed untouchable by the country’s hierarchical caste system.

The 100-million-rupee lottery jackpot would not be a particularly big draw in the United States, where a $1.05 billion Mega Millions jackpot will be at stake Tuesday night. But in India, a country with a per capita annual gross domestic product of around $2,400, it’s a colossal fortune.

The 11 winners were especially lucky because the southern Indian state of Kerala, which has run the lottery since 1967, had made the recent drawing a “bumper prize” edition, which increased the jackpot in honor of India’s annual summer monsoon.

News of the winning ticket was reported earlier by the BBC and other news outlets. In India, the story has reverberated far beyond Kerala as one of hope in the face of immense challenges.

Sheeja Karma, the director of the all-women municipal recycling program where the women work, told the broadcaster NDTV that they live in “very humble households fighting the harsh realities of life.”

“The money from the lottery will help them overcome adversities and their current monetary difficulties,” KT Balabhaskaran, a sanitation official in Kerala, said. “It will be life-changing.”