Gaming platforms involving real money need to be banned, not regulated, as they are “rotten” by character, according to Vijay Goel, a senior BJP leader and former Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs, Sports, and Youth Affairs, who has been waging a campaign against such games.
Online gaming is synonymous with online gambling, Mr. Goel told The Hindu in an interview on Thursday (January 2, 2024). “People are being financially ruined,” he said.
Over the last few months, Mr. Goel has shot off letters on the issue to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, and other public officials. His advocacy goes beyond politicians, as he has also been taking out newspaper ads inviting support from the public. In the process, Mr. Goel — who remains active in the BJP though his term in the Rajya Sabha lapsed in 2020 — has emerged as his party’s most vocal voice on the dangers of online gaming.
‘Online gambling’
His sights are not limited to the foreign betting apps which operate completely illegally. Instead, he is against all real money gaming platforms that accept large wagers and involve significant user risk. (Video games are not on Mr. Goel’s hit list, he clarified.)
“There is no difference between online gaming and online gambling,” Mr. Goel declared. As soon as he began his campaign last November, he was approached by two real money gaming associations, he said, showing their emails requesting meetings. In the discussions that followed, the two industry bodies appeared supportive of Mr. Goel’s advocacy. Until, he said, he found out what their member firms actually do.
High financial risk
Real money gaming firms allow users to play “games of skill” for large prizes, which is legal in India. This is the result of a series of court judgements that removed games like rummy and poker from the constitutional remit of the term “gambling”, making it hard for States to ban them. Efforts to abolish such games by Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, for instance, have been prevented by successful legal challenges.
The crux of the legal argument set out by real money gaming firms is that these games require and reward skill, and thus cannot be clubbed with games of pure chance, such as lotteries. Mr. Goel rejected this argument, pointing out that the “financial risks” disclosed by these firms in their advertising shows that “the character of these games itself is rotten”.
Addictive pattern
Mr. Goel drew connections to his successful advocacy against lotteries three decades ago. The Delhi State lottery used to run what was called a “single digit lottery”, where the odds of winning some amount of money were far higher than a multi-digit lottery, where the odds were infinitesimal making for a lower addictive element. “I made speeches in schools and JJ clusters (slums and low income neighbourhoods) against these lotteries,” he said. He then raised the issue with Members of Parliament, culminating in an ordinance from then-Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral in 1997 that allowed States to ban single-digit lotteries, which Delhi immediately enacted.
A similar dynamic — of people losing a lot of money in an addictive pattern — is now emerging within the “online gaming” industry, Mr. Goel said. “I asked them what the maximum size of their bets is, and they said ₹10,000,” he said, recounting a meeting with one of the real money gaming federations.
‘Regulation not enough’
“Regulation will not fix something that has a rotten character. These apps need to be banned,” he said. “Regulation can only fix unfair business practices — and I’m not saying there are any in this industry — but these games are fundamentally bad,” he added, pointing to the spate of suicides in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu triggered by huge financial losses in real money gaming apps.
In 2023, the Union government notified the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Amendment Rules, requiring real money gaming firms to be part of a self-regulatory body, and follow other rules. But Mr. Goel is pushing for more definitive action against these firms. “The youth of this country are getting trapped and heading towards destruction,” he wrote in a November letter to Mr. Vaishnaw.
During the anti-lottery campaign, Mr. Goel was able to get 162 MPs across the political spectrum to sign a petition supporting his cause. Ahead of the next session of Parliament, he says, he plans on approaching MPs again for a petition against real money gaming.
“Even during the lottery days, it was my own party in government, so people asked me why I was doing this,” he said. “Eventually we garnered enough support from the people against single digit lotteries. I hope to achieve the same thing with public support [against real money gaming] this year.”
Published – January 02, 2025 08:55 pm IST
