Most punters in India are anxiously awaiting the resumption of racing in the country and the mantra being spouted is all about online betting.

However, will online betting succeed if racing resumes in India - that is the million-dollar question since it will be confined to the totalizators only and therefore will be subject to GST and the Clubs' Commission - a total of nearly 35% which makes it unattractive to punters.

As is well-known, big punters like to place their bets with bookmakers and if racing resumes they will naturally gravitate to the illegal book-makers. Since these bets will not be officially recorded the race clubs will not derive any benefit from such transactions.

The totalizators are patronized principally by the small punters most of whom are at best semi-literate, so much so, that most of them don't even know the names of the horses and merely go by their numbers. Will such semi-literate punters be able to play online? Do they possess credit cards and such payment paraphernelia.? Also,it is not just a matter of placing the bet successfully - rather it must be placed on the winning horse. In order to do this the punter requires every scrap of information regarding the past performances of the horses, track-work etc.

All this information was readily available in the race-books. Will the race-book publishers continue to publish the race-books? Securing this information from the online race-card will be cumbersome, since it will be necessary to click on the names of each horse in order to open out the required information. All this is time-consuming and many bets may go astray due to the cumbersome method of information gathering.

All in all, will online betting be beneficial to the punter - will he he be able to spot the winner given the paucity of information that will the scenario? Will the race clubs be able to generate sufficient revenue from online betting to keep the sport alive given the fact that most semi-literate punters will not be comfortable with electronic betting. Your opinions, my friends.