British Rule Accused of Creating the “Inescapable Death Trap” of Online Gambling With It Not Legal In Many Countries
With the 75th Independence Day celebrations well underway in India, a recently published opinion article accuses the long-gone British rule for setting in motion the processes that have now produced the “inescapable death trap” of online gambling.
Another Attempt At Passing The Blame For Online Gambling Around Instead Pf Working Towards Legal Regulation And Safe Gaming Environment
“It was the British government that first encouraged gambling in India in order to gain through tax revenues. Now, with the current turn of events, it seems like they have left a lasting legacy,” states the author Lekshmi Parameswaran, a New Delhi-based researcher and writer.
Mrs Parameswaran takes note of the numerous publications appearing across media about people, mostly young, educated and with stable family backgrounds, who take their own lives after losing substantial amounts while gambling online on games such as rummy. The eastern state of Tamil Nadu alone had nearly 20 such suicides in the course of the last three years, she points out.
“A 20-year-old boy in Kerala died by suicide after he lost Rs 5 lakh in online rummy. A 36-year-old father in Tamil Nadu who was a bank employee murdered his two children and killed his wife due to mounting debts. A 29-year-old woman in Chennai died by suicide after she lost all her gold and her life’s savings in online rummy,” Mrs Parameswaran writes.
Placing some blame on the pandemic and the long lockdowns which saw people stay at home and entertain themselves with online games, the author describes the patterns that “remain the same for everyone getting ensnared into the web of online gambling”.
People start by mandatorily winning their first few games which entices them to play more, putting more money in. Soon, they get “addicted to the habit of winning” so deeply that they start borrowing money to play, not paying attention to the risks. “In the end, when they find themselves neck-deep in debt, they make the difficult decision of taking their lives,” Lekshmi Parameswaran explains.
Mrs Parameswaran also points a finger at Indian High Courts and the Supreme Court and “certain judgements” that “have contributed to the online gaming industry penetrating deep into Indian society” by observing that games of skill including fantasy sports and rummy are protected business activities under the Union Constitution. According to her, the constitutionally guaranteed fundamental rights are a “loophole” that gaming operators use to “circumvent the law”.
India, she argues, would do well to take into account the recommendations by the Justice K. Chandru committee to ban all online card games in order “to secure its future by protecting its youth”. The committee was recently established by the Tamil Nadu government to study the impact of online gaming and enable the state to pass a new ban.
Did the British Tax Appetites Create India’s Enormous Gambling Market?
Gambling and betting existed in India long before the British nation was even created or even before the Roman Empire conquered some parts of the island. The colonial-era Public Gaming Act, 1867, actually prohibited most types of gaming and public gaming houses with the exemption on skill games, horse racing and lottery. Nevertheless, the modern-day size of gambling and betting activities in India has been estimated at $130 billion (₹950,000 crores) annually and growing at a rate of 7 percent per year.
Unfortunately, only a small portion of these turnovers go through responsible websites that offer cricket betting tips, sportsbooks, casinos or other real money games, and the majority of operations happen underground. Online gaming activities have been estimated at $2.8 billion (₹22,500 crores) and all the rest is going along illegal channels. Notably, the online gaming market is growing by 40 percent a year, much faster than the black market and enlarging its share.
Suicides and Online Gaming
A scientific study by professor of psychiatry Dr Sandip H. Shah submitted to the Tamil Nadu government in response to the Justice K. Chandru committee’s recommendations concluded that “there isn’t sufficient data available both before and after online gaming was legalized to correlate suicide with online gaming.”
According to Dr Shah’s research, coincidence and even some correlations do not equate to causation and suicide is a complex problem where suicidal ideation is caused by a multitude of reasons.
The study stresses that strict gaming regulations and blanket bans are the very things that can worsen the situation with suicides. A prohibition on gaming in practice means that players will turn to the black market to indulge in their passion. There, they will not be handled by licensed and responsible operators, but will likely be subjected to dubious gaming conditions and criminal methods of debt collection and loan sharks.
At the same time, India registered its highest ever rate of death by suicide in 2021 at 120 per million people, growing by 6.1 percent over the preceding year and highlighting the negative effects of the pandemic on the emotional well-being of people in the country.
Data provided by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) reveals that 164,033 Indians committed suicide in 2021, 7.2 percent more than the 153,052 people who took their own lives in 2020, while the 2019 figure was around 139,000.
The highest increase in suicide occurrence was registered among students and small businessmen, as well as in people with incomes lower than ₹1 lakh per year who accounted for roughly two-thirds of all deaths by suicide in 2021.
Dr Shah points out that Indians do not take mental health issues seriously compared to other nations, and people in distress would rather go to a temple, than visit a doctor. The lack of awareness and sensitivity, as well as the stigma around mental health issues, worsens the situation.
Regulation and Not Blanket Bans Can Bring Safety
Citizens should be able to know that when they use an Indian online betting website, a casino platform or a real money skill gaming portal, they are offered a licensed and healthy gaming product with the necessary built-in safety nets and responsible gaming mechanisms that ensure a safe user experience. Such a healthy environment cannot be produced by gaming bans, but by progressive regulation, and when that is present, users will be tempted to choose regulated sites rather than play on the black market.
A number of countries around the world such as Sweden, Denmark, Germany, the UK, many states in the US, and most lately Peru and Uruguay, have adopted regulatory frameworks including a central gaming authority and a licensing regime in order to gain control over the sector, raise taxes, and curb the related social costs.
Such regulatory frameworks revolve around customer protection and responsible gaming, with special attention paid to problem gamers. Users are shielded from various risks, including mental health issues, debt accumulation, unfair gaming practices and odds tampering, fraud and data theft.
Implementing gaming regulation in India should also contain focus on education on problem gaming and mental health issues and eliminating social stigma towards individuals with mental, gambling or financial problems to relieve the pressure experienced by people in distress and enable them to seek and receive proper help.
With the alarming rise of suicides in the country, there is a duty of care in India to seek sensible action on this concerning fact rather than pointing fingers at online gambling, the British or the court system.