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More than two thousand years ago, Kautilya confronted a problem that continues to perplex modern governments. Gambling was widespread in ancient India. The Mahabharata’s central tragedy begins with a game of dice in which Yudhishthira gambles away his kingdom, his brothers and Draupadi. The Mauryan strategist understood both the attraction and dangers of gambling, but recognised that prohibition rarely extinguishes human behaviour. The state’s responsibility, he argued, was not to abolish gambling but to regulate it.
Kautilya’s solution was pragmatic. Gambling houses were licensed, supervised and taxed. Standardised dice prevented fraud, while officials supervised activity because unregulated gambling bred exploitation and crime.
More than two millennia later, India confronts the same dilemma. Technology has transformed gambling beyond recognition, yet much of the legal framework still rests upon the Public Gambling Act of 1867, enacted when gambling meant physical betting houses rather than smartphones capable of placing wagers anywhere in the world.
The result is an inconsistent system. Government lotteries flourish in several states. Casinos operate legally in Goa and Sikkim. Horse racing enjoys judicial protection as a game of skill, while sports betting remains largely prohibited even as millions of Indians access offshore platforms with little difficulty.
Technology has quietly outpaced regulation. A mobile phone, a digital wallet and a few minutes are often enough to reach betting platforms hosted beyond India’s jurisdiction. Many advertise aggressively through surrogate marketing, celebrity endorsements and sports sponsorships while remaining largely beyond the reach of Indian regulators.
Governments have tightened taxation, restricted payment channels and warned citizens against illegal betting platforms. These measures have inconvenienced operators but done little to reduce demand. Instead, much of the betting economy has migrated towards opaque offshore networks where consumer protection is weakest.
This is the central contradiction of India’s gambling policy. The state regulates digital payments with remarkable sophistication yet continues to rely on a fragmented legal framework for online gambling.
Global sport has become inseparable from regulated betting markets. Major football leagues, cricket tournaments and tennis competitions generate vast volumes of legal wagering across many jurisdictions. Instead of developing a regulated domestic framework that could generate revenue for sports development, addiction treatment and consumer protection, successive governments have allowed much of the betting economy to migrate offshore.
Public debate often measures gambling in terms of market size, tax revenues or legal definitions. Yet these statistics reveal remarkably little about the harm gambling leaves behind. While policymakers argue over definitions of ‘skill’ and ‘chance’, the real costs unfold quietly inside ordinary homes.
The greatest tragedy of gambling is not the money lost at the betting table but the damage carried home afterwards—to relationships, trust and financial security. Those losses rarely appear in official statistics, yet they are the costs society ultimately bears. A civilised society is judged not by how loudly it condemns vice, but by how effectively it protects those who suffer its consequences.
Consider the story of an eighteen-year-old from a small town in eastern India. Raised by a single mother, he left home to work as a construction labourer in another state. Every month he sent money home, which helped his mother slowly build the modest house she had long dreamed of owning.
Then came the IPL season. Introduced to betting by co-workers, he began with wagers of a few hundred rupees. Early wins created the illusion of easy money. Soon his weekly earnings were being staked on cricket matches. When losses mounted, loan apps filled the gap. Borrowing became routine. The money that once built his mother’s home disappeared into an endless attempt to recover earlier losses.
His mother never realised her son’s wages had vanished into a cycle of bets and debt. Within two years, the unfinished house had become a pile of debris. The relationship between mother and son collapsed under the weight of deception and recrimination. Today, she no longer knows where he lives, where he works or even whether he is safe. What began as a few seemingly harmless bets ended in the slow disintegration of a family.
The story is anecdotal, but its pattern is painfully familiar. Across India, debt-fuelled betting leaves families grappling with financial ruin, fractured relationships and years of repayment. Jewellery is sold. Children’s education savings disappear. Medical treatment is postponed. Weddings are deferred. What begins as one person’s search for easy money often becomes an entire household’s burden.
Yet public policy rarely places these families at the centre of the debate. Governments willingly accept revenue from approved forms of gambling while leaving vulnerable citizens exposed to an inconsistent regulatory regime. The appearance of toughness is maintained, but the underlying harms persist.
Recent legislative changes suggest that India may finally be moving beyond the old debate over prohibition. For years, arguments revolved around whether fantasy sports, poker and rummy were games of skill. Parliament has answered a different question. Under the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025, the distinction is no longer skill versus chance but money versus no money.
The government’s latest advisory extends responsibility beyond gaming companies to app stores, banks, telecom providers, payment systems and advertisers, making the wider digital ecosystem accountable. Whether this ambitious framework succeeds, however, will depend as much on administrative capacity as on legal powers. Regulators cannot reasonably demand seamless compliance while their own digital infrastructure remains unfinished.
India’s gambling crisis is not primarily an addiction problem. It is a governance problem. Governments have confused prohibition with protection and symbolism with regulation. A policy that drives millions of citizens towards offshore operators while offering few consumer safeguards cannot honestly be described as successful. The debate is no longer whether gambling exists—it plainly does. The real question is whether the state chooses to govern it intelligently.
Behind every betting statistic lies a household struggling with debt, anxiety and broken trust. Modern India has forgotten what Kautilya understood more than two millennia ago: prohibition may satisfy politics, but when harm reduction gives way to symbolism, families pay the price.
Submitted by: Aloka Sengupta
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