Gambling is a minefield

The tragic end of a goldsmith and his family in Tamil Nadu in a suicide pact where three children were poisoned with cyanide is a pointer to what addiction can do to ruin lives. With gold jewellery business losing out to mechanised production, the goldsmith saw only an online lottery as a way out. Little would he have known how the odds are fixed in any sort of gambling and in games of chance, where the bank is the only possible winner. It was easy enough for the State to clamp down on illegal lotteries like betting on the last two digits of New York cotton exchange prices, that was all the rage in 1970s’ India, tackling new age online lotteries is very different. Also, online lotteries are run by many states, especially in the Northeast.

Without a clear online gambling policy, including on cricket, sharks, even of the international variety, are free to run Internet lotteries. While statutory bans are difficult to enforce, the least the government can do is to watch the Internet and shut down activities that are leading people to ruin. Already, there is no social net for India’s population, and having to deal with those who are dropping out of productive work for various causes simply adds to the burden. But, so far as gambling is concerned, only awareness of its pitfalls and how betting is like a bewitching proposition leading one to doom by offering grand hope of impossible riches might help people understand the dangers. But then how do you spread the message across a vast country with a gullible population? Maybe, the goldsmith’s pitiful video on his plight might make some see the light.